Background
Andrew Arnold Lambing was born in Manorville, Pennsylvania, the son of Michael Anthony and Anne (Shields) Lambing. His father was a descendant of Christopher Lambing, who in 1740 emigrated to America from Alsace, France. His mother was of Irish ancestry.
Education
He was educated at St. Michael's Seminary, Pittsburgh.
Career
Lambing was ordained a priest on August 4, 1869. He held the following pastorates in Pennsylvania: Loretto, 1869; Cameron Bottom, 1870; Kittanning, 1870-1873; Pittsburgh (St. Paul's Orphan Asylum and Church of St. Mary of Mercy), 1873-85; and Wilkinsburg, 1885-1918. He served the Pittsburgh diocese as fiscal procurator, as president of the diocesan school board, and as censor of books.
After having written two manuals, The Orphan's Friend (1875) and The Sunday School Teacher's Manual (1877), he definitely entered the field of historical study and writing. In 1880 he published A History of the Catholic Church in the Dioceses of Pittsburg and Allegheny and five years later, The Baptismal Register of Fort Duquesne, 1754-1756 (1885), translated from the French and accompanied by an introductory essay and notes.
His interest in the Fort likewise led him to dedicate an altar to Our Lady of the Assumption at the Beautiful River, as a memorial of the eighteenth-century shrine. Father Lambing's other publications include: The Sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church (1892); Come, Holy Ghost (1901); The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1904); The Fountain of Living Water (1907); and Foundation Stones of a Great Diocese: Brief Biographical Sketches of the Deceased Bishops and Priests Who Labored in the Diocese of Pittsburgh from the Earliest Times to the Present (1912). In addition he contributed to The Standard History of Pittsburg (1898), edited by Erasmus Wilson, and helped to edit A Century and a Half of Pittsburg and Her People (1908). In so far as his historical books are concerned, they must be judged as pioneer efforts, carried through without the preparation which modern research demands, therefore faulty, but nevertheless useful as first digests of the records.
When Pope Leo's encyclical on the study of history was published (1883), Father Lambing tried to organize a historical society, but the result of his efforts was a publication which later became American Catholic Historical Researches and was ultimately merged (1912) with the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. As a serious attempt to promote study of the past by Catholics it has its place among journals of a former day. Having won the personal friendship of Andrew Carnegie, Father Lambing was made one of the trustees of the Carnegie Institute and of the Carnegie Technical School, Pittsburgh. For many years he was president of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, and in 1893 he prepared the Pittsburgh diocesan school exhibit for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago.
His last years were spent in such complete retirement that virtually no notice was taken of his death, which occurred at Wilkinsburg, where he is buried.