Turn left onto Church Street. The first Catholic Church in town was built in 1866 as a dirt-floored adobe with a steeple and bells but no ceiling, so pigeons flew about and billed and cooed, and did other things during Mass. The first priest was a Diocesan named P.J. Munnecom, a hearty and likeable Dutchman, whose great passions in life were the church, poker, and dealing in real estate, not necessarily in that order. One of his poker playing pals stated that the father sometimes became so engrossed in the game that he'd forget evening vespers until his impatient parishioners rang the church bells. The father would look up, startled, throw down his cards, and exclaim, “There go those damned bells again!” Eventually, because Fr. Munnecom seemed to spend more time swapping Trinidad land than attending to his flock’s needs, Archbishop Lamy in Santa Fe (yes, the same archbishop to whom death came in Willa Cather’s famous novel) decided that the good father might not be the best father for the parish and suspended him from duty. Shortly after, Munnecom, having made a handsome retirement from Trinidad real estate, returned home to Holland.
When the new priests, Jesuits, arrived in 1875, they took one horrified look at the adobe church and began fund-raising efforts. On land donated partly by a Catholic rancher and partly by a Jewish merchant, the new church rose across the street. At the time, it was dedicated in 1885, it was termed the most beautiful in Colorado, although the Gothic Revival steeple was not added until the 1890s. The sanctuary is normally open during daylight hours, so step (quietly) inside to admire the 60-foot barrel-vaulted ceiling, the lovely stained glass windows, the beautiful statues of the apostles, and the bas-relief Stations of the Cross.
Across the street to the west, where the parochial school buildings now stand, was the site of the town’s first public schools. When the Sisters of Charity arrived in 1870, in response to an appeal by city fathers to the Church, they were to found a parochial school. The Trinidad School Board, which was charged with starting a public school but had never managed it, asked the Sisters if they would also run a public school. They agreed, although two of the original three sisters had to be sent on to Santa Fe in exchange for two others who spoke Spanish. Remember this had been U.S. territory for just a few years, and the vast majority of the population spoke only Spanish. Having opened the first School District in the state of Colorado, School Dist. #1, the Sisters ran Trinidad’s public school for 22 years.
Sister of Charity Blandina Segale wrote in her letters to her sister, “Summer of 1892. I’m to meet the School Board. We met. The intent of the meeting was to notify me that “under no circumstances does the school board want to lose your services, but we ask you to change your mode of dress.” I looked steadily at the Chairman and replied: “The Constitution of the United States gives me the same privilege to wear this mode of dress as it gives you to wear your trousers. Good-bye. . . .” Sister Blandina continues, “So this is the end of twenty-two years’ work in Public School Number One, opened in 1870 when Trinidad was mostly governed by the best shotmen and sheriff’s lead, mobs to hang murderers, and jail birds never come to trial, and the life of a man was considered a trifle compared to the possession of a horse.” A pocket garden in Sister Blandina’s venerable honor is now located along a walking path from Holy Trinity Church to the east.
