paulist_missions: Records of missions held by the Paulist Fathers, 1851-1893
In historydata: Data Sets for Historians

Description Usage Format Variables Author(s) References Examples

This dataset contains transcriptions of records of missions held in by the Paulist Fathers, a Roman Catholic missionary order, in the nineteenth-century United States. This dataset contains only the most interesting data recorded in the full Paulist mission chronicles. The founding members of the Paulist Fathers began as members of the Redemptorist order. Their chronicles include both the missions held as Redemptorists and as Paulists. This transcription only includes missions up to the year 1893; the Paulist Chronicles contain more records than are transcribed here, and the Paulists continued holding missions for many more years than are recorded in the Chronicles.

1	paulist_missions

A data frame with 841 observations of 11 variables.

mission_number: The number assigned to the mission in the Paulist Mission Chronicles.
church: The name of the church or cathedral at which the mission was held.
city, state: The location of the mission.
start_date, end_date: The start and end dates of the mission as a character string.
confessions: The number of confessions heard by the Paulists at the mission, which is a rough proxy for the number of people who attended the mission.
converts: The total number of converts made during the mission and people left under instruction for conversion after the mission was over.
order: Whether the mission was held under the Redemptorist or Paulist order.
lat, long: The latitude and longitude of the city where the mission was held.

Lincoln Mullen, George Mason University

The Paulist missions are recorded in Chronicle of the Missions Given by the Congregation of Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle, six manuscript volumes, Office of Paulist History and Archives, North American Paulist Center, Washington, DC. Data transcribed by Lincoln Mullen.

1	head(paulist_missions)

  mission_number                        church          city state start_date
1              1           St. Joseph's Church      New York    NY   4/6/1851
2              2          St. Michael's Church       Loretto    PA  4/27/1851
3              3             St. Mary's Church Hollidaysburg    PA  5/18/1851
4              4 Church of St. John Evangelist     Johnstown    PA  5/31/1851
5              5            St. Peter's Church      New York    NY  9/28/1851
6              6       St. Patrick's Cathedral      New York    NY 10/19/1851
    end_date confessions converts        order      lat      long
1  4/20/1851        6000        0 Redemptorist 40.71435 -74.00597
2  5/11/1851        1700        0 Redemptorist 40.50313 -78.63030
3  5/28/1851        1000        0 Redemptorist 40.42729 -78.38890
4   6/8/1851        1000        0 Redemptorist 40.32674 -78.92197
5 10/12/1851        4000        0 Redemptorist 40.71435 -74.00597
6  11/3/1851        7000        0 Redemptorist 40.71435 -74.00597