How time flies! The very first Mass at Assumption was celebrated in what is now the Parish Hall on Easter Sunday, April 17, 1881. This date is historic for more than one reason. Our first Mass took place during the very brief presidency of James Garfield.  Garfield was inaugurated on March 4, 1881 and was assassinated 79 days later. Carter Harrison, a native of Kentucky, was mayor of Chicago in 1881. In the 1880 census Chicago had a population of 503,185 and was the nation’s fourth largest city. By the time of the 1890 census the population of Chicago had doubled to over 1 million and it had become our nation’s “second city,” a position it held until the 1990 census (when it dropped to number three). Such prodigious growth happened in spite of waves of epidemics that afflicted our city during the 1880’s. In that year of 1881, for example, a smallpox epidemic took the lives of 1180 Chicagoans.

Many other landmark events occurred across our nation in 1881. The Barnum and Bailey circus debuted in New York City, the American Red Cross was founded, Booker T. Washington established Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and Sitting Bull surrendered to the U.S. Army (essentially ending the Indian Wars) Still, the Wild West was still pretty wild in 1881. Billy the Kid was shot by Sherriff Pat Garrett on July 14 of that year, and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26. And the Chicago Cubs set an all-time record for meager attendance:  On September 27 the Cubs played Troy in front of a crowd of only twelve people.

Work began on the present church of Assumption in 1884, with the first Mass celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1886. 1886 was a great year for inventions. Coca-Cola, using a formula combining caffeine and cocaine, was sold for the first time in an Atlanta drug store. The first dishwasher was produced that year, as was the first linotype machine (which allowed newspapers and other publications to set type very quickly). The typewriter ribbon went on the market that year, and Karl Benz in Germany produced the first gasoline powered automobile (It had only three wheels). Chicago, experiencing a rapid growth of population, was becoming a center of labor unrest. The Haymarket Riots, sparked by a rally in support of striking workers from the McCormick Harvesting Company, began on May 4, 1886.

In 1890 the Italian born population of Chicago was only 5,685. By 1900 it had grown to 16,008. During the 1890’s, Assumption’s pastor, Fr. Moreschini, arranged to have the Servite priests from Assumption conduct instruction classes for Italian Catholics living in five of our neighboring parishes, in the growing Italian community on the West Side, and in Melrose Park. He also invited Mother Cabrini to open a school in the parish. Assumption School on Erie Street opened in 1899 with 500 students, a number that soon grew to 850.

This was truly the heyday of River North as an Italian neighborhood. After World War I, many of the Italian families began moving west. Homes were replaced by factories and office buildings. As the twentieth century progressed, Assumption became a neighborhood church of a different kind, ministering to and largely supported by those who worked in the neighborhood but who lived elsewhere. For Sunday Mass, Assumption welcomed back some of the old time families and other people who had come to like Assumption because of its beauty or because almost everything at Mass was done “the old way.” Today, as we celebrate our church’s anniversary and our feast day picnic, we are once again a residential neighborhood—made up of people of many nations and many nationalities.

So many generations of Chicagoans have found a “home” at Assumption, that when we celebrate an anniversary, I always feel both proud and humbled: humbled by the faith, the generosity, and the love of those who have gone before us; but also proud of who we are today, a community of people serving God and their sisters and brothers. The 1880’s were a time of change and innovation, but we know that our world is changing more rapidly than ever, and that will certainly impact us. I look back on Servites like Fr. Tom Ferrazzi, who became pastor in the 1930’s when the parish was essentially broke, who managed to generate funds to keep the church alive during the Great Depression and for many decades afterward when the church had no actual parishioners. Then there was Fr. Gus Kulbis in the 1990’s, who implemented many of the liturgical changes introduced in most parishes thirty years earlier, so that we could be a more welcoming place to new residents. We have made it this far by God’s grace, and with God’s grace we move into the future.

                                                                                    Fr. Joe