By Gretchen Keiser

Prominent in the cemetery at Locust Grove is a marker dedicated with great love to Father Jeremiah F. O’Neill, Jr. from the bishop of his day, Bishop Ignatius Persico of Savannah, and his fellow priests.

Investigation shows that this site has special significance for members of the Atlanta archdiocese, as Father O’Neill, Jr. was the first resident pastor assigned to Atlanta in 1851.

The parish registers of Immaculate Conception Shrine in Atlanta contain the following notation in the year 1851, according to Priscilla Bravo, archivist for the Savannah diocese:

“The Catholics of Atlanta have been hitherto under the charge of the pastor of Macon and occasionally visited by other clergymen of the diocese. On the thirteenth of February of the present year I was appointed pastor of Atlanta by Rt. Rev. F.X. Gartland, bishop of Savannah.” The notation is signed by J.F. O’Neill, Jr., the archivist said.

Atlanta’s first pastor assumed, in 1851, a “territory” that included the Shrine in Atlanta and the following missions: Covington, Newton County; Fayetteville and Jonesboro in Fayette County; Newnan, Coweta County; Marietta and vicinity, Cobb County; Iron Works; Case County; Kingeton and the neighborhood of the state railroad; Rome and the vicinity of Floyd County; Dalton and vicinity, Murray County; and several families in Hall, Walker, Lumpkin and Forsyth counties.

While material is gathered from secondary historical sources and is, at times, contradictory, Mrs. Bravo said that Father O’Neill, Jr. was apparently born in Canada, but his family migrated to Locust Grove when he was a child. An uncle, Father Jeremiah F. O’Neill, Sr., was also a legendary priest serving Georgia in the 1800s. Recollections of the first priest ordained in Atlanta, Father James Doonan, that were published in the November 1921 Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, said both priests were “men of fine culture, well versed in music.” According to this recollection, “Old Father Jerry” on the flute and violin. The recollection included an anecdote in which the older Father O’Neill, during his missionary travels, played his flute to charm a farmer into providing him lodging for the night.

Father Jeremiah O’Neill, Jr. was a contemporary of Father Thomas O’Reilly, according to these sources, remaining at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception as pastor until 1859 and, along with Father O’Reilly, working in the hospitals among the wounded of the war years. He was also a pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Macon, which had been the mother parish of the Atlanta mission, before she received her first resident pastor.

Mrs. Bravo said that Father O’Neill, Jr. died at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, but that his body was brought back to Locust Grove for burial.

A history of Immaculate Conception Shrine in the St. Anthony’s News of 1942 says he was buried at Locust Grove “within the sight of the little church where as a child he had served Mass.” He was 41 years old.