Amsterdam’s Monsignor Browne

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdan Recorder 

Sunday, September 21, 2025

     William Arthur Browne, who became one of Amsterdam’s most important religious leaders, was born in Watervliet on April 9, 1858.

His older brother Daniel had become a priest but died in 1872, which led to William joining the priesthood. Ordained in 1882, Father Browne served a parish in Catskill for two years where his cousin was pastor. He did a stint at a private girls school in Albany and was pastor of a church in Castleton.

After the unexpected death of the formidable Reverend John P. McIncrow, pastor at St. Mary’s on East Main Street in Amsterdam, Browne was picked to succeed him.

McIncrow had been designated pastor for life at St. Mary’s. Browne also was named pastor for life and served thirty-three years, from 1897 until his death at age seventy-five in August of 1933.

McIncrow had taken steps to make St. Mary’s the center of Catholic life in Amsterdam by creating a church school, St. Mary’s Institute, and inviting the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to teach there.

He bought land in Fort Johnson for the parish cemetery. There is a statue of Father McIncrow in the cemetery, dedicated during a crowded ceremony on Father Browne’s watch in 1902. Many attendees arrived by trolley car.

That same year Father Browne purchased the Abram Marcellus home on Guy Park Avenue. It opened as St. Mary’s Hospital in 1903. Like the parish school, many hospital staff members were drawn from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

In 1909 Father Browne awarded a contract to J.J. Turner Construction of Amsterdam to build a new school building on Forbes and Maple Streets near the church to accommodate an enrollment of over seven hundred students. The building, now demolished, cost $200,000 and was state of the art for its time with slate stair treads and terrazzo floors.

It was named Dugan Hall for its chief financial benefactor, Patrick Dugan. Dugan was an Irish immigrant whose East Main Street grocery business prospered as did his real estate purchases. Dugan died in 1906 and left his estate to the church through Father Browne as Dugan’s wife and children had predeceased him.

In 1921 St. Mary’s Hospital Auxiliary was formed and the first nursing school students graduated in 1923. Father Browne spearheaded construction of a hospital building which opened in 1927 with four operating rooms, an x-ray department and laboratory.

Amsterdam town supervisor Thomas DiMezza has a photograph of the crowd outside St. Mary’s Church for the funeral of the man who had become Monsignor Browne by the end of his life.

DiMezza, a former Amsterdam city police detective lieutenant, said he had never seen a funeral that large, “The funeral home was McNamara Funeral Home. My father was working with McNamara at the time and was at the head of the casket going into church.” His father, Emilio DiMezza, later operated his own funeral home.

Thousands paid their respects the night before the funeral by filing past Monsignor Browne’s casket inside the church. Over 200 priests, headed by Bishop Edward Gibbons, attended the funeral. The late monsignor’s nephew, Reverend William Browne of St. Joseph’s Church in Albany, celebrated Mass.

All downtown businesses were closed as the funeral procession made its way to the cemetery. There Monsignor Joseph A. Delaney, vicar general of the diocese, blessed the grave. Delaney had spent his childhood in Amsterdam where his father was a plumber. He became the next pastor of St. Mary’s and served three years until his death in 1936.

Much information for this story came from Jacqueline Daly Murphy’s book, “St. Mary’s Parish: A History.”

Bob Cudmore can be reached at 518-346-6657 or [email protected]