The extraordinary life of Fr Peter Whelan
The extraordinary life of a Wexford-born priest who was known as the ‘Angel of Andersonville’ POW camp during the American Civil War, was remembered earlier this month in Savannah, Georgia on the 150th anniversary of his death.
Fr. Peter Whelan was born in 1802 in Loughnageer, Clongeen and attended Birchfield College in Kilkenny before emigrating to America, where he became a priest, ministering to a wave of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Hunger and helped to build the first Catholic churches in Charleston, South Carolina and Georgia.
He died in 1871 at the age of 69 and his funeral was the biggest ever seen at that time in Savannah with many hundreds of people lining the streets of the city.
Reporting on his death, the Savannah Morning News described Fr. Whelan as ‘an honest man, a sincere Christian, an exemplary priest of the church and a devoted patriot who had not an enemy in the world but counted his friends in thousands’.
Exactly 150 years later, on February 6, a crowd gathered around his tombstone in the Cathedral Cemetery in Savannah to honour his exceptional career in a ceremony organised by the Centre for Irish Research and Teaching at Georgia Southern University, with retired Irishborn Monsignor Oliver O’ Neill of Savannah Diocese as the principal speaker.
Fr. Whelan was transferred in 1854 to the newly former Archdiocese of Savannah which covered all of Georgia and part of Florida and where he later became Vicar General and also served for a time as Administrator.
After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Confederacy established a garrison at Fort Pulaski, at the mouth of the Savannah River. Among the units assigned to the garrison were the Mongomery Rifles, a predominantly Irish unit.
Fr. Whelan looked after the spiritual and physical wellbeing of the men and had the misfortune to be in Fort Pulaski when the Union forces commenced a heavy shelling of the outpost in 1862, resulting in its surrender.
Although offered his liberty, he would not abandon the men. He joined them as a prisoner of war and was transferred to Governor’s Island in New York. He organised food and clothing for the soldiers while saying Mass and tending to the sick.
They were eventually exchanged for Union prisoners and Fr. Whelan returned to his priestly duties in Savannah.
However, there were disturbing reports about a hellish prisoner of war camp in Americus in west-central Georgia called Andersonville, with no clean water or sanitation.
Despite having been imprisoned as a Confederate in New York, Fr. Whelan volunteered to go to the prison and tend to the men, with many dying every day from starvation and disease.
As Monsignor O’ Neill recounted in his speech: ‘Under a burning sun, he cared for the Union army inmates, whose numbers exceeded 33,000, even though the place was designed to accommodate only a third of that. Fleas and rats proliferated, as did such ailments as scurvy, diarrhoea, and dysentery. The camp hospital maintained a gangrene ward. One prisoner, a Sergeant David Kennedy, labelled Andersonville a ‘hell on earth, where it takes seven... occupants to make a shadow.’
Some fellow priests attempted to assist the 62-year old Fr. Whelan but none could stand the physical and emotional strain and left within a few weeks. However, his own sacrifice came at a price and he contracted congestion of the lungs.
With Georgia eventually falling to the advancing forces of Union General Sherman, the Andersonville prisoners were transferred and Fr. Whelan had to leave them.
Before he departed, he arranged a loan of $400 to buy flour and had it baked into hundreds of loaves of bread that became known to the prisoners as ‘Whelan’s Bread’ and it provided the men with rations for several months.
According to an article written about the anniversaryevent by Howard Keeley, Phd, Director of the Centre for Irish Research and Teaching, Monsignor O’ Neill can claim a special connection to Fr. Whelan’s place of origin, having trained for the prieshood in St. Peter’s Seminary and maintained close ties to the area over the years.
The Monsignor’s address included an anecdote about the discovery of Fr Whelan’s childhood roots. When fellow Wexfordian, the late Bill Murray was visiting the late Fianna Fail councillor Jimmy Curtis at his home in Loughnageer, he spotted an old photographic portrait over the fireplace, which was identical to one he had seen and enquired about during a trip to Savannah.
He was told it was Fr. Peter Whelan who became Vicar General of the Savannah Diocese and was diocesan administrator between the September 1854 death of Savannah’s first bishop, FX Gartland from Dublin and the August installation of its second bishop, John Barry, from Oylegate, Wexford.
Jimmy Curtis informed him that he was the man’s greatgreat grand nephew and furthermore that Fr. Whelan had grown up in the house.
Mr. Curtis who died last year, later helped organise the erection in 2013 of two stone plaques honouring Fr. Whelan’s Savannah ministry - one at his Loughnageer farmstead and the other beside the local parish church in Clongeen.
Mr. Curtis, his wife and one of his daughters made a pilgrimage to Savannah where they laid a wreath at Fr. Whelan’s grave.
The current Bishop of Savannah, Most Reverend Stephen D. Parkes also spoke and described Fr. Whelan as an example of the neighbourliness and indiscriminate giving that Jesus mandates in Chapter 25 of St. Matthew’s Gospel.
The same scripture was read at the start of the ceremony by Bishop Emeritus, Most Reverend J. Kevin Boland.
The ceremony was organised with assistance from the diocescan archivist, Katy Lockard and attended by representatives of Savannah’s Irish societies among others.
Ferns Diocesan Chancellor Fr. John Carroll said Fr. Whelan played a very unique role in the American Civil War .
‘His story is of particular interest to Wexford people but it is one of much broader significance in terms of Irish American ecclesiastical, political and cultural life.’