An Early Catholic Community

An Early Catholic Community. . There were very few Catholic priests on the frontier, and none visited Sumner County until about 1830. In their absence, area Catholics met at Rogana to read the prayers for Mass on Sunday and to keep their faith alive. , A Catholic in the Tennessee Wilderness , Hugh Rogan was a devout Roman Catholic. Like many others, he came to the New World in search of religious and political freedom. As a Catholic in English-ruled Ireland, Rogan could not own land, hold political office, or obtain an education. Here, Rogan was one of the signers of the Cumberland Contract. He received a land grant for service to the country. And, free to practice his religion, he kept the Catholic faith alive on the Tennessee frontier. , When Hugh Rogan brought his family to Tennessee about 1798, only one hundred or so Catholics lived in the whole state. There were no priests assigned to Tennessee and no formal churches in what was still the wilderness frontier. It seems likely that Hugh Rogan never saw a priest after his return to Tennessee. , Rogana, a Meeting Place for Catholics , Hugh Rogan was well-liked and well-respected. A number of those who settled in the small community that grew up near his farm were also Catholic. The Rogan family opened their home to them. It became a meeting place for Catholics living in this and the surrounding counties. In the absence of a priest, they met informally. Perhaps, as another isolated Tennessee Catholic did, they read the prayers for Mass though unable in celebrate the Mass itself. One imagines that these occasions were days of worship, feasting and socializing treasured by those who lived on isolated farms in the wilderness of the Cumberland Valley. , Twenty-three missionary priests visited the Rogan home over a span of fifty years, but it seems likely that none did so in Hugh Rogan's lifetime. It is recorded that Rogan's second son, Francis, born in 1798, did not see a priest until he was thirty years old, ten years after Hugh Hogan's death in 1818.