St. Mark’s parish continues centennial in high spirits

ASHLAND – Parishioners of St. Mark’s Catholic Church are in a yearlong celebration of its centennial. The northern Maine parish was established on Oct. 26, 1902, with the Rev. Joseph Drolet as its founding pastor.

In the past 100 years, 27 priests have served as pastors and associate pastors of both the church and its missions. The Rev. Scott Mower is pastor at St. Mark’s and its missions at St. Catherine’s in Washburn and Our Lady of the Lake in Portage.

All told with St. Mark’s and its two missions, Mower is the spiritual director for 450 families. About 250 of the families are in Ashland itself with the missions having about 100 families each.

“It’s a wonderful feeling in the parish, celebrating 100 years,” Mower said Sunday afternoon. “We really needed a reason to celebrate a happy occasion in the church.

“Especially with everything that has been going on in the church this past year,” he said, referring to the sexual abuse scandals plaguing the Catholic Church. “Parishioners are very proud of their parish because they know the hardship that their ancestors went through to make it happen.”

While many of its artifacts have gone by the wayside over the years, the present-day St. Mark’s still has some of its history in the belfry. The steeple of the church has two bells. The top bell, made of bronze, comes from the church in nearby Sheridan. It was purchased through special collections with donations of 25 cents to $2, according to records. It is the only bell that rings.

The bottom bell comes from St. Anne’s Mission in Ashland. The 300-pound cast-iron bell, made in 1885, originally cost $325 and was purchased by St. Mark’s from the Episcopal church in Kingman for $50. This bell is not used.

While there are activities going on throughout the year, the largest activity by the parish was its centennial Mass earlier this month.

The special Mass was celebrated by the Most Rev. Michael Cote, auxiliary bishop of Portland, on Aug. 4. That was followed by a barbecue on the church lawn. More than 380 people attended.

During that weekend, the rectory garage was turned into a St. Mark’s museum. The museum was filled with memorabilia of the parish and its missions, including the Stations of the Cross, statues, pictures, candle holders, vestments, veils and catechisms.

During the year, “centennial tidbits” about the parish’s history will be published in the parish’s weekly bulletin. The parish has also had sacred vessels, several of them antiques that have been in storage for years, refurbished.

Copies of a centennial cookbook are still available. Also available are replicas of the old St. Mark’s in Sheridan and the new St. Mark’s in Ashland. They were commissioned by Fernwood of Maine.

The first ever parish photo directory is now at the publisher. A parish history is being done and should be ready by Christmas.

While the parish was canonically established in 1902, Catholics in an area just outside of Ashland, known as Frenchville, were served by visiting priests for at least 20 years before that.

Father Drolet , the establishing pastor, succeeded in his third attempt to create a parish in the area. The parish has had an interesting, sometimes hard-to-follow history, involving the Village of Frenchville and the towns of Sheridan, Portage, Washburn and Ashland.

The first chapel was located in Sheridan. Its second pastor, the Rev. Joseph Marcoux, built a new chapel in Frenchville and established a mission in Portage, 10 miles north.

Over the years, when a pastor was unavailable, the parish became a mission of other area Catholic churches. A church built in Sheridan in 1913 served the area until the 1970s.

In 1944, St. Mark’s at Sheridan was a parish with three missions at Portage, Ashland and Frenchville.

In 1959, the mission of Our Lady of the Snows at Frenchville Village closed. It was demolished in 1966. In 1961, the original Our Lady of the Lakes Mission Church at Portage was closed, and a new mission church was built there in 1963.

St. Mark’s Parish moved from Sheridan to Ashland in 1965. Land was donated by the Washburn trust for the parish to be established. The present-day St. Mark’s Church in Ashland was built on the Allen Farm Road in 1985. It was dedicated by Bishop Edward O’Leary on June 15 of that year.

Over the years, St. Catherine’s mission in Washburn has been under the jurisdiction of Ashland, Caribou and Presque Isle, and since 1998 it is again tied to St. Mark’s of Ashland.

During its 100 years, pastors of St. Mark’s have celebrated Mass in nine different churches at Frenchville, Sheridan, Washburn, Portage and Ashland.

During many of these years, the pastor of St. Mark’s was also the “pastor of the woods.” As often as time, distance and weather allowed, the pastor would minister and celebrate Mass for woodsmen in woods camps, sometimes as far as 20 miles into the woods west of Ashland and Portage.