St. George’s Church in Jeffersonville

166 years of service

By FRITZ MAYER

JEFFERSONVILLE, NY — The history of St. George’s Catholic Church in Jeffersonville is preserved in two pamphlets that were created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the church in 1943 and the 150th anniversary in 1983.

According to the booklets, local Catholics first gathered at a log cabin built by a man named Joseph Seibert, who was among a large number of Catholic German immigrants who settled in the western part of Sullivan County in the 1830s and ‘40s. Seibert was described as a man of considerable wealth, who didn’t particularly enjoy physical labor such as clearing. He missed the conveniences he had enjoyed in Germany and he especially missed his Catholic Church.

Seibert’s wife, whose first name is not given, decided to help her husband and her neighbors, and travelled nearly 70 miles by foot to Newburgh, then got on a boat for New York City to arrange for a priest to visit the area. Thanks to her efforts, a priest soon came to the region, and the first Mass was said in the Seibert cabin in 1843. (The cabin, incidentally, is still in place and is now the Welsh Cabin Restaurant and Bar on Hessinger-Lare Road, outside of what is now Jeffersonville.)

Due to the difficulties of travel at the time, Mass was said “every other month or infrequently.”

Even so, the congregation quickly grew too large to be contained within the Seibert house, or within the other houses that hosted religious services in the area, so the parishioners all donated lumber for a church to be built on Esselmann Road, again outside of the village.

By the late 1850s, that church, too, was considered to be inadequate, with new immigrants, many of them Irish, wishing to take part in services. So the church acquired property at its present location on Schoolhouse Road in Jeffersonville, and the church was built in 1860.

The priest at the time, Father Joseph Roesch, lived in Obernburg, and had no horse to take him to the church. The parishioners, therefore, all agreed to buy him a horse and provide him with feed. The booklet said, “Each family agreed to raise an extra bag of oats to be delivered after the harvest, and thus came into existence one of the strangest of church collections—an oats collection, which existed down to 1900 and even later.”

Since then, the church has had more than 33 priests. The current priest is Father Ignatius Vu. The parish consists of some 200 families, but the congregation is not quite as numerous as in years past. Gene Hahn, who provided The River Reporter with copies of the booklets, and who has been a member of the church for his entire life, said St. George’s, like other churches in the area, is affected by the fact that many young people don’t stay in the area after they graduate from high school. They move away in pursuit of good jobs.

Still, a visit to the church today reflects a vibrant religious organization with a proud heritage.

St. George’s Church Service Schedule

Sunday Mass: 7:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

Daily Mass: 8:00 a.m.

Immaculate Conception Mass: Tuesday, December 8, 7:00 p.m.

Christmas Eve Family and Children’s Mass: Thursday, December 24, 4:00 p.m.

Christmas Eve Midnight Mass: Thursday, December 24, 10:00 p.m.

Christmas Day Mass: Friday, December 25, 10:00 a.m.

New Years Day Mass: Friday, December 25, 11:00 a.m.

Telephone 845/482-4640.