The authoritative source on
  early churches of New Jersey

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We've created a database and photographic inventory on more than half the 18th & 19th century churches in the state and add to it each month. We welcome and solicit all contributions and suggestions from our visitors.

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   Photographic Inventory

Church of the Holy Cross
Rumson, Monmouth County

In 1883, the increasing Catholic population in Sea Bright and Rumson led to the formation of a new parish. The Knights of Pythias Hall in the River Side Hotel was rented for two hundred dollars a month, and that hall was the site of the first Mass in 1883. The contract to build the church was awarded to John Burke of Asbury Park for the sum of $8,440 and the architect was Patrick Keely, who was responsible for a dozen Catholic churches in New Jersey and perhaps more than a hundred in the country. Burke also built
St. Michael’s in Long Branch. One of the first donors was General Clinton B. Fisk, a Methodist and the presidential candidate of the Prohibition Party in 1888, who was then residing in Rumson. This is an exceptionally large wooden frame Gothic church, somewhat similar in profile to Keely’s church in New Brunswick.

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