FATHER COYLE'S MISSION Like the tough immigrant workmen who formed its first congregation, St. Joseph's Church put down its roots among the alien rocks of Bergen Hill over a century ago. With little more than the raw energy of its people and the vision of its leaders, the hardy transplant bloomed amid the clamor and dust of a growing industrial city. Its real story is not found in the building of a church, a school, or an institution, but in the flow of life through its long history -always changing, adapting, renewing - alive with the color and vitality of its people.

The life began with the arrival of some three hundred Irish laborers, imported to work on the Erie railroad tunnel that was being built through Bergen Hill in 1856. These poor, unskilled workmen lived in makeshift shacks thrown up along the work-site. In one such shack Father James Coyle came to live in June of that year, sent by Father john Kelly of St. Peter's Church on Grand Street, to establish a mission to minister to the needs of these (mostly Catholic) workers.

His mission field was a large tract of farmland extending from Hoboken on the North to Bergen Point on the South, and from the Hackensack meadows on the West to the Hill on the East. Perhaps five-hundred Catholics lived in scattered settlements throughout this district. In years to come more than twenty separate parishes would be carved from this area, but in that spring of 1856, Father Coyle was quite alone.

He took his meals with an aunt, Mrs. Colton, who lived on Bay Street. Each night after supper he left her home with a lantern and made his way up Bergen Hill to his shack. On October 26, 1856, the Sunday after he was officially appointed pastor of his parish, he celebrated the first Mass on Bergen Hill in one of the local boardinghouses. About two-hundred people attended, and at each succeeding Mass the number grew. Poor as they were, these immigrant families responded generously to his appeal for help in building a proper place of worship, to be named (at first) St. Bridget's Chapel, after their favorite Irish saint.

On November 11th, twelve lots 25' x 50' on Clinton Avenue (now Hopkins Avenue) were purchased on mortgage for eighteen hundred dollars from Mr. E. Coles, and the building of a structure that could serve as both church and school was begun. It would be two stories high, with Gothic windows and a sloping roof. Local workers like Dennis McCarren, a mason, and James Keary, a carpenter, built rapidly, and in only five weeks the little chapel was far enough along for Father Coyle to celebrate the first Mass there on Sunday, December 21st.

The total expenses of the new parish that first year (including twenty-two dollars for the salary of a teacher, Mr. Breen) came to $3,409.39 -an enormous sum for a poor congregation whose weekly collection amounted to no more than twenty dollars. Collections were taken up in the churches of St. Peter and St. Mary, and this was supplemented with Christmas contributions from the clergy of the diocese.

On January 26, 1857, Father Coyle opened Bergen Hill's first parochial school on the second floor of the Chapel on Hopkins Avenue. One hundred and twenty parish children attended. Unfortunately, Father Coyle was taken ill soon after the school opened, and he was forced to resign.