By Phil Egan, Special for the Sarnia Jornal, Then and Now
(2015) He enrolled at Notre Dame at age 15, and went on to become president of a university. He rode with Union forces during the U.S. Civil war through some of its fiercest fighting in Tennessee and Georgia. In 1864, he turned down an offer from Abraham Lincoln to become the first Roman Catholic Chaplain of the U.S. Navy. Instead, he chose to come to Sarnia.
Rev. Edmund Burke (E.
B.) Kilroy was easily one of the most interesting men ever to serve as a pastor in Sarnia, and in 1868, he would host the Commander of the U.S. Army, General William Tecumseh Sherman, right here in our home town.
This is a little of his story.
Born in Ireland in November, 1830, Edmund Kilroy came to Canada with his family in 1836 and settled near Windsor. The family later relocated to Lockport, New York. He enrolled at the great Catholic University of Notre Dame in 1845 in order to pursue his theological studies, and was ordained a priest in 1854 by Bishop Antony O’Regan of Chicago.. He spent the next two years gaining increasing renown as a missionary priest in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, and was subsequently appointed as president of the University of St. Mary’s of the Lake in Chicago.
Father Kilroy was a pastor in Lafayette, Indiana when the American Civil War broke out. Oliver Hazard Perry Morton, the famous war governor of Indiana, appointed Fr. Kilroy as a special agent to the state, responsible for tending to the religious needs of the thousands of Catholic soldiers from Indiana who were in the ranks of the armies of the Potomac, Mississippi and Cumberland. Fr. Kilroy rode with the Union troops through some of the worst fighting, giving the last rites of the Church to mortally wounded soldiers, earning a reputation for untiring service and personal courage. He travelled with General William Tecumseh Sherman through much of the fiercest fighting on the “March to the Sea” through Georgia.
A famous war photograph pictures him with Colonel Patrick Kelly, commander of the Union’s famed Irish Brigade, and several of its chaplains who were friends from his days at Notre Dame.
In 1854, his duties for Indiana completed, he was assigned to Sarnia as pastor of Our Lady of Mercy Church, having passed on an opportunity for advancement as chaplain of the U.S. Navy. He purchased the O’Brien property east of the church for $11,000 and built a large convent for the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.
In 1868, William Tecumseh Sherman, now Commander of the U.S. Army, made an official visit to Port Huron. He and his retinue then crossed the St. Clair River so that Sherman could visit his old friend. The visit was officially unrecorded, but church records state that General Sherman was entertained to a gala evening at the convent for a concert by the Sisters’ musician students, as well as refreshments and food for the notable visitors.