LAMBING, ANDREW ARNOLD

Priest, author, historian; b. Manorville, Pa., Feb. 1, 1842; d. Wilkinsburg, Pa., Dec. 24, 1918. He was the third child of Michael Anthony and Anne (Shields) Lambing. He entered St. Michael Seminary, Glenwood, Pa., in 1863, and was ordained on Aug. 4, 1869, by Bp. Michael Domenec, CM, of Pittsburgh, Pa. First assigned to St. Francis College, Loretto, Pa., he later held appointments in Pennsylvania at Pittsburgh (1873–85) and Wilkinsburg (1885–1918). He was active in diocesan affairs, serving as fiscal procurator, censor of books, and president of the diocesan school board. As a writer, he contributed articles to newspapers and to such magazines as Ave Maria and American Ecclesiastical Review. His religious works that gained wide popularity included The Orphan's Friend (1875), The Sunday-School Teacher's Manual (1877), The Sacramentals (1892), Come Holy Ghost (1901), The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1904), and Fountains of Living Water (1907). Lambing was an authority on early western Pennsylvanian history. He wrote A History of the Catholic Church in the Dioceses of Pittsburgh and Allegheny (1880), which, with its critical essay on sources, was a landmark in American Catholic historiography. He founded (1884) the Ohio Valley Catholic Historical Society, the first organization of its kind. In July 1884 he edited the first American Catholic historical quarterly, Historical Researches in Western Pennsylvania, Principally Catholic, retitled American Catholic Historical Researches (1886). He also translated The Baptismal Register of Fort Duquesne, 1754–1756 (1885); contributed to History of Allegheny County (1889) and Standard History of Pittsburgh (1898); helped to edit A Century and a Half of Pittsburgh and Her People (1908); and wrote Brief Sketch of St. James' Roman Catholic Church, Wilkinsburg, Pa. (n.d.) and Foundation Stones of a Great Diocese (1912). In 1915 Lambing was elevated to the rank of domestic prelate.

Bibliography: m. m. hammill, The Expansion of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh 1960).

[m. c. schroeder]