How do you celebrate the anniversary of a disgraceful incident of the distant past? Do you sweep it under the rug? Or do you review the details and learn from it?

This Saturday is the anniversary of the day nearly a century and a half ago when a mob in Ellsworth tarred and feathered a Catholic priest, John Bapst. The assault took place on Oct. 14, 1854, also a Saturday.

Bapst was a Swiss-born Jesuit who involved himself in a controversy over an Ellsworth School Committee’s order that all students must read from the Protestant King James version of the Bible or be expelled from school.

The dispute could have been resolved peacefully. Bangor school officials let students take their choice between Protestant and Catholic texts. But William H. Chaney, the fiery editor of the Ellsworth Herald, who backed the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing movement that was sweeping the country, entered the fray.

Chaney attacked Bapst repeatedly in his newspaper, and warned Protestants that their Irish servants would poison their food on an appointed day in a plot to eradicate Protestantism.

In early June, 1854, after a mob tried to bomb the Ellsworth rectory, Bapst was moved temporarily to Bangor for his own safety, Chaney helped organize a town meeting and pushed through a resolution threatening Bapst with tarring and feathering if he dared to show his face again in Ellsworth.

The controversy raged, and three months later a gang called the Cast Iron Band carried out the threat.

The gang found out that Bapst was back in town and was visiting a parishioner, Richard Kent. They dragged the priest from the house, beat him, took his wallet and watch, stripped him, covered him with hot tar, rolled him in chicken feathers, tied him to a rough plank, and carried him into a woods. Some wanted to hang him, but the mob finally abandoned him around midnight.

News of the assault spread through the state and the country, arousing expressions of outrage. But in Ellsworth the reaction was mixed. Friends took Bapst in, cleaned him up and helped him escape to Bangor. But a public meeting called by Chaney voted to blame Bapst for what had happened, and a grand jury refused to indict the attackers

The priest survived the ordeal, saying mass twice as friends with pitchforks, defended him against the mob. In Bangor, he soon helped organize the construction of St. John’s Catholic Church on York Street.

Four years later, Bapst was reassigned to Boston, where he raised funds for the construction of Boston College. He became its first rector and was honored by having its library named for him. In Bangor, when two Catholic parishes built a new high school, they named it John Bapst Memorial High School.

The present principal, Joseph Sekera, thinks the story of John Bapst should be remembered. He and teachers at the school often tell students the story of the tarring and feathering. Sekera sometimes takes groups of students on trips to Boston, including tours of Boston College. He watches for their reaction when they see John Bapst’s name above the library entrance.

In Ellsworth, the episode is certainly not being swept under the rug. Martha Witham, the new principal at Ellsworth High School, had not heard of the incident, but her quick informal survey disclosed that Joyce Whitmore teaches it in her American history course.

And Herbert T. Silsby II, retold the full story this month in his “Looking Backward” column in The Ellsworth American, present-day successor to Chaney’s old Herald.