St. Henry's Catholic Church is a historic

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

parish in the rural community of Harriettsville in the southeastern part of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. Established for German settlers in the 1860s, it worships in a landmark church building constructed in the 1890s. As the only stone building in the area and the work of a prominent architect, it has been named a

historic site A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been rec ...

History

Noble County's pioneer settlers arrived soon after the

Treaty of Greenville The Treaty of Greenville, formally titled Treaty with the Wyandots, etc., was a 1795 treaty between the United States and indigenous nations of the Northwest Territory (now Midwestern United States), including the Wyandot and Delaware peoples, ...

, 1795;''History of Noble County, Ohio, with Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men''.

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

: L.H. Watkins, 1887. although the area is near the earliest settlement at

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, the northward advance of civilization was delayed by events such as the Big Bottom massacre, 1790, on the

Muskingum River The Muskingum River (Shawnee: ') is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in southeastern Ohio in the United States. An important commercial route in the 19th century, it flows generally southward through the eastern hill country o ...

not far to the west. However, the history of Harriettsville began far later, for Moses T. Spencer

plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bear ...

ted it in 1839. Among the earliest settlers were a pair of Frenchmen, while numerous Germans were among the small village's population by the late 1880s. The first clergy in modern-day Noble County were itinerant ministers of the

Methodist Episcopal Church The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) was the oldest and largest Methodist denomination in the United States from its founding in 1784 until 1939. It was also the first religious denomination in the US to organize itself on a national basis. In ...

; preachers from other denominations were equally as active as the Methodists, but less numerous. Harriettsville's first church, predating the community itself, was a small group of Methodists formed in 1832. In contrast, St. Henry's Church was organized only in 1868, but a small

frame A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (con ...

building was completed in the same year, while the earliest Methodist church building was erected in 1869. This pioneer building measured and cost $1,800; it was built largely by the donation of one man, William Smithberger. No longer did the village's Catholics need to await occasional visits from the priest at Immaculate Conception Church in

Fulda Fulda () (historically in English called Fuld) is a town in Hesse, Germany; it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (''Kreis''). In 1990, the town hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival. History ...

in order to hear

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. Virtually all of the members in the early decades were Germans or of German descent. A

parish school A parochial school is a private primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathematics and language arts. The ...

was formed in the late 1870s, and in its first twenty years, the parish grew fourfold in membership. This growth caused the original church building to be too small: land for a new building was purchased in 1879,Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 2.

St. Clair Shores St. Clair Shores is a suburban city bordering Lake St. Clair in Macomb County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It forms a part of the Metro Detroit area, and is located about northeast of downtown Detroit. Its population was 59,715 at the 2010 ...

: Somerset, 1999, 1121. and construction finished in 1894.

Architecture

St. Henry's Church is a stone building in the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style; the most prominent component is a multi-

story Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...

tower on one side of the facade. Small windows pierce the walls of the tower, the main section of which is topped by a

louver A louver (American English) or louvre (British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". Mor ...

ed belfry. Crowning the entire tower is a tall

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

topped with a cross, while space for large clocks is left unoccupied between the spire and the belfry. The primary portion of the church is a simpler rectangular structure; the shingled roof rises to a prominent

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

at the front of the building.,

Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...

, 2007. Accessed 2014-01-02. Sitting next to the church is a small frame rectory with gabled roof, built in the late nineteenth century. Rather than hiring a local architect, the parishioners chose

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

architect Adolphus Druiding to design their new church at the end of the nineteenth century. One of Ohio's most rural areas, Noble County possesses a

built environment The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human ac ...

consisting primarily of traditional

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

buildings, rather than the high style and professional craftsmanship that the church exemplifies. Moreover, very few stone buildings are found anywhere in the county, and Harriettsville has no other stone buildings at all.

Historic site

In 1982, the church and rectory were listed together on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, qualifying both because of their historically significant architecture and because of their important place in the area's history. The property is one of nine Noble County locations on the National Register; among the others is Immaculate Conception Church in Fulda, which supported Harriettsville's Catholics before St. Henry parish was formed.

References

External links

Details
from the Diocese of Steubenville {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Henry's Catholic Church, Harriettsville, Ohio Religious organizations established in 1868 Roman Catholic churches completed in 1894 Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Steubenville Buildings and structures in Noble County, Ohio Gothic Revival church buildings in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Noble County, Ohio Stone churches in Ohio German-American culture in Ohio 1894 establishments in Ohio 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States