"Much of the early history of Manchester is bound up in the records of the Diocese of Portland, of which it formed a part for twenty-nine years. Mass was first celebrated in New Hampshire as early as 1694, but the real history of Catholicity can hardly be said to begin until a century and a quarter later. So few were Catholics at first, that up to 1822 there were not enough families in the entire state to warrant the appointment of even one resident priest."