Occasional Papers 57
When Edward Southwell was pursuing in the
early 1900's his plan of separating Our Lady
of the Scapular, Manhattan, and
Transfiguration, Tarrytown, from the Irish
Province and joining them with one or two
houses of the American Province to begin a
new province, he felt it important that his
name be listed among the trustees of the
Tarrytown property. Were he not listed as a
trustee then he might have a legal problem
transferring the title of the property to
the new entity he was hoping to establish.
Southwell knew from the foundation of the
28th Street parish that the Archdiocese of
New York demanded that each church and its
property be registered in the corporate
title of the parish. Somehow he was able to
avoid this at Tarrytown presumably to
achieve his separation plan. The Tarrytown
property had originally been bought by lay
people so that the seller would not inflate
the price should they know it was being
purchased for a church. These purchasers
transferred the title to individual
Carmelites who in turn transferred it to The
Missionary Society of Our Lady of Mount
Carmel of which Southwell was a trustee.
That is how the property in Tarrytown was
held by a Carmelite title and not in the
name of the parish corporation. This fact
came to the attention of the archdiocese by
the application for a loan for the addition
to Transfiguration School in 1999-2000 and
they effected a change of title to that of
the parish corporation.
Just before the completion of the original
church at Transfiguration in October, 1898,
the Carmelites borrowed $35,000 on September
19, 1898 from Mutual Life Insurance of New
York. Interest was 5% and payment dates
were the fifteenth of March and September
(Lib 1212, p 225). An indenture was signed
the same day placing the parish=s
property as collateral for the loan. In
addition, Archbishop Michael Corrigan signed
on the same day a bond for $35,000 that was
also collateral of the loan. This indicates
that Corrigan was aware of the Carmelites
use of their corporation, The Missionary
Society, as owners of the Tarrytown
property.
By April, 1919, the original loan had been
reduced to $22,000 and probably at the
initiation of Patrick Cardinal Hayes, the
Archbishop of New York, a new loan was made
with Mutual Life Insurance in the name of
the cardinal. The interest remained at 5%
as did the payment dates. The point of this
seems to have been to remove the Carmelites
from the liability of the original loan and
made Hayes and the parish responsible. This
loan was finally satisfied in January,
1938. At 5% interest for all those years,
Mutual Life certainly profited. Money was
sent from Our Lady of the Scapular to
Transfiguration for debt reduction. In a
letter to Pius Mayer, the Prior General,
Edward Southwell, then the Irish Provincial,
mentioned this because he wanted more money
to go to the Irish Province for its debt
reduction rather than for that of the
Tarrytown parish. This is the first
indication we have of the dependency between
the two parishes.
When Paul O=Dwyer
was the 28th Street pastor in 1911, he stated
that the indebtedness of the Tarrytown parish to
his parish was $19,000 but he reasoned that the
debt was $21,000 since nothing in interest or
principal had been paid. Southwell had put the
debt at $23,000 at the 1906 Provincial Chapter.
O=Dwyer
through his own calculations showed that in
1911, $43,000 was due to the Manhattan parish by
Transfiguration. The financial picture is
contradictory and confusing due to interest
calculations and incomplete records but the
bottom line was that Tarrytown was part of Our
Lady of the Scapular or at least a daughter
parish whose original funds came from the mother
house.
A
document of 1913 has this Tarrytown debt listed
as $29,000 but had the good news that the debt
on the priory of $7,800 was liquidated. The
debt on the church was $31,500 having been
reduced from $39,000. The four year period of
1909-1912 saw Transfiguration=s
deficit of its mission in Elmsford being from
$6,500 to $7,776 annually.
When Edward Southwell was the pastor of
Transfiguration in 1917, he stated that
Tarrytown=s
debt of $23,000 was being paid off at the rate
of $2,000 a year. Southwell, who had made the
original purchase and church construction,
listed this cost as $60,000.
What further complicates an effort to get a
handle on these finances is that in 1932 the
Carmelites province loaned $19,042 to Tarrytown
and $8,000 more was loaned in 1937-1938.
Existing reports after these dates show payments
being made each year.
The early finances of Transfiguration are
confusing but one thing stands out:
Transfiguration was financially dependent on Our
Lady of the Scapular. There are few records but
it seems that running expenses and other funds
for the Tarrytown parish came from the
Carmelites=
Manhattan establishment. I feel that Cardinal
Hayes=
action was an attempt to break the hold of one
parish on another and make Transfiguration truly
independent.
Alfred Isacsson, O. Carm.
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