A saint like Father Bulger must have impressed some of his own piety and zeal on the Catholics of Paterson and its outlying districts. It was while he was pastor here, in 1821, that the "Society of Useful Manufactures" gave a plot of ground on the corner of Mill and Congress streets, for the purpose of erecting, maintaining and keeping a building or house of public worship of God. On this plot the Catholics built their first church, a one-story building 25×35 feet, costing $1000. We may smile at the smallness and inexpensiveness of the structure, but any priest of the olden time who labored to build churches when his few parishioners were glad to give a hard day's work for 50 or 60 cents, can readily understand that the building of that first church, at a cost of one thousand dollars, was as great and appalling a task as the construction of the stone church in 1833, at a cost of $15,000. In remote country districts the experience of Paterson and Rochester is repeated year by year. In one place a gutted house is made to play the part of a church; in another, even a smaller edifice than the first of Paterson, and costing less, answers the first demands of religion that the souls of the scattered few may not perish. Blessings on these small and modest shanties, surmounted by a cross and holding an altar. Warmer prayers from loving hearts go not up to heaven from marble basilicas, nor were priests' hearts crushed and broken in the strain to meet interest on debts incurred beyond the power to pay. Father Bulger was soon called to New York to assist Bishop Connolly, and in November of 1824 died after a short illness, and his remains lie under the monument at the left hand as you enter the gateway of old St. Patrick's on Mott street, and side by side are those of Father O'Gorman, the first ordained by Bishop Connolly, who followed to the grave his fellow-missionary within a week. In the dearth of priests to do the work of the diocese the Bishop felt keenly these losses, and in January, 1825, he himself while suffering from a severe cold was called from his bed at night to administer the sacraments to a dying Christian, and within a week, on the 5th of February, joined his devoted assistants in eternity. At one time both Rev. Richard Bulger and Rev. Michael O'Gorman had been stationed at Utica, N. Y. You will allow me, I am sure, the liberty of linking Northern New Jersey and Western New York. Though so far separated they formed parts of the one diocese, and often the priests that labored here were sent to what was then called "The Far West" to hunt up and save the scattered sheep of the one fold. Bishop Timon, in his history of missions in Western New York, writes: "The Catholics of Auburn, then numbering four or five families, and having several children to be baptized, sent to New York for a Catholic priest. The Rev. Mr. O'Gorman came. This was the first visit that Auburn had ever received from a Catholic clergyman."