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families (to be of either nationality was to be Catholic in those early days) spread out between West Randolph, Bethel, Royalton, and Sharon –– the French having migrated south from Canada, and the Irish were mostly ex-railroaders’ families who had settled here and there near the right-of-way of the track they had helped to build.

In the the spring of 1865, on Palm Sunday, Bishop de Goesbriand himself visited to say Mass and inspect the new church, which was finished and painted outside, but unfinished except for the bare floor within.

Mass was celebrated in this small mission church once each month by a circuit-riding priest, Fr. Francis Clavier, whose home parish was Northfield. On September 16, 1866, the Bishop returned to bless the church under the invocation of Saints Donatian and Rogatian. Fr. Clavier was a native of Nantes, Brittany, France, home of the first (and only other) SS. Donatien et Rogatien Church, and Bishop de Goesbriand was also a Breton by birth.

During the time that West Randolph was a mission of Northfield, Fathers Thomas Halpin and William J. O’Sullivan, in quarter-yearly