Moses Benedict Fortune

   

Moses Benedict Fortune standing (at right), date unknown. 

Seated Father Jeremiah Trecy. Photo taken in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

While researching the histories of the Fortune Sisters, I dove a little deeper into the Fortune side of their family—Irish immigrants who came to the United States in 1848. The 70-year-old patriarch of the family, Laurence Fortune, died in Blackwater, Ireland, in 1847, two years into the Potato Famine. This prompted his widow, Bridget (Murphey) Fortune, and their four surviving children to emigrate to America. The 1850 Census shows them living in St. Louis, Missouri—Bridget (age 60) with James (34), Mary (29), and Moses Benedict (20)—while one son, Patrick (23) was in the New Mexico Territory as a U.S. Dragoon, protecting wagon trains on the Santa Fe Trail.

 

I’ll discuss Patrick Fortune—the Fortune Sisters’ grandfather—in a later post. Today’s post has to do with his brother Moses, who became a Dominican priest around 1855. He was the Fortune Sisters' granduncle.

 

Moses Benedict Fortune’s first assignment was in Hazel Green, Wisconsin, where he was still living as of 1867. Then in 1870 he was listed as the pastor of St. Dominic’s Church in Washington, DC. Though the Parish of St. Dominic was established in 1852, the cornerstone of the church was not laid at 609 F Street SW until November 19, 1865. In the early 1870s it was expanded by noted English Gothic architect Patrick Keely, and Fr. Fortune made a request to the city’s Fire Commission, as reported in the National Republican on October 22, 1874:

 

Fire Commissioners

Numerous Communications Acted Upon

A meeting of the Board of Commissioners was held last night. . . .

      Colonel Tait submitted a communication from Rev. Dr. M. B. Fortune, pastor of St. Dominic’s Church, asking that a fire alarm be placed with the bell on the new church, as a protection against fire and a means of having the correct time. Referred to the president of the board to report. . . .

 

It does not appear that the alarm was installed. 

 

Around 1880, Moses Fortune took on a new assignment as pastor of St. Peter Catholic Church in Memphis, Tennessee. The Dominican community in Memphis had been decimated by a series of yellow fever epidemics in the 1860s and ’70s. Though many residents fled the city as the epidemics raged—1867, 1873, 1878, and 1879—the priests and nuns remained to minister to the needs of those who remained. Eight priests and eleven nuns died of the disease and are listed among the Memphis Martyrs. 

 

Fortunately for Fortune, the city never saw a yellow fever epidemic after 1879, though its cause (mosquitos) was not determined until the 1890s. But Fortune’s luck was about the run out. The Memphis City Directory listed him as pastor from 1881 to 1883, but then he appears to have moved to Kentucky. Then on March 12, 1885, his old Washington church burned down, as reported the following day in the National Republican:

 

St. Dominic’s Destroyed

A Noble Church Edifice Falls

a Victim to the Flames

The Walls About All Remaining of the Ecclesiastical

Home of the Dominican Fathers—A Sad Night

Witnessed by the Faithful Parishioners

 

St. Dominic’s Church, one of the oldest and most popular churches in this city, was seriously damaged by fire yesterday, and will for some time leave Catholics of South Washington without a place to worship. The fire started in the boiler room, situated at the southwest corner of the church, under the entrance to the altar. Florence McAuliffe, who was in charge of the boiler room, discovered that the room was on fire at 11:15. The room was one sheet of flame, and finding that he could do nothing he rushed to the first precinct station a short distance away and telephoned for No. 4 engine company. By the time the engine arrived at the church the fire had spread from the boiler room to the altar, and the walls surrounding the pastor’s retiring room and acolytes’ quarters were on fire. A second alarm and finally a general alarm was sent in, and in a short [time] the whole fire department was on the ground.

      Smoke was coming out of all of the windows, and the intense heat had cracked the glass. A great crowd gathered about, and the police and the reserve forces of the adjoining precincts were called out. Ropes were stretched across the streets to keep the crowds back. The people gathered about were nearly all members of the parish, and their lamentations at the destruction of their beautiful church were loud and deep.

      Soon after the fire was discovered Father Horgan, pastor of the church, came out of his house, which adjoins the church, and with some gentlemen went into the church to save the statuary and other valuable articles about the altar. They were compelled to fight their way through the dense smoke, but they finally reached the altar and succeeded in saving the statues of St. Joseph and the Virgin, which stood on either side of the altar. They also saved the fourteen stations representing the journey to Calvary in bas-relief work.

      All the vestments of the pastor which were in the rear of the sacristy were destroyed. All of the gilt work around the altar, and even that in the choir gallery, were destroyed or injured by the fire or from the smoke. . . .

      At 3 o’clock, although the fire was still burning, the firemen had it under control, and it became apparent that the building would be saved.

      Inside there was a scene of devastation. The beautiful gilt ornaments of the sacristy and altar were now a heap of rubbish, and coming through holes made in the roof by the fire were large streams of water covering everything. The beautiful pictures on the walls were ruined, and the organ was damaged almost beyond repair. . . . The damage was estimated at $60,000.

      A festival was to have been given in April to clear away the debt on the church. The building cost about $100,000 and was insured for half that sum. . . .

      The St. Dominic’s fire . . . has exploded the belief which prevails in some quarters that great fires are either impossible or unlikely in church buildings, and hence that only a scanty insurance is necessary in such cases.

 

Fifty-five-year-old Fr. Moses Benedict Fortune died in Kentucky the same day as the news was reported—March 13, 1885—141 years ago today. It seems likely that the news may have caused his death, either from the shock or by his own hand, though I have found no evidence to support either theory.

 

Fortune is buried at the St. Rose Cemetery in Springfield, Kentucky.