Background
James Fitton was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was of English and Welsh descent, the son of Abraham Fitton, an emigrant from Preston, England, and Sarah Williams.
James Fitton was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was of English and Welsh descent, the son of Abraham Fitton, an emigrant from Preston, England, and Sarah Williams.
He attended the public schools of Boston, and an academy conducted by Rev. Virgil Horace Barber, S. J. , at Claremont, New Hampshire.
He prepared for the priesthood under the personal instruction of Bishop Fenwick of Boston, and was by him ordained on December 23, 1827. His ministry covered a period of more than fifty years, during the first half of which he traveled in almost every section of New England, a zealous missionary indifferent to hardship and persecution. Churches sprang up everywhere along his path.
He was first sent to labor among the Passamaquoddy Indians of Maine. Later he was commissioned to look after the spiritual wants of the faithful scattered over the state of Vermont.
In July 1830 he went to Connecticut where he was the second resident priest in what is now the Diocese of Hartford. Here he remained for the next six years, sometimes alone and sometimes with assistants. From Hartford, which was his residence, he went forth “to wherever a child of the faith was to be found. ” Every county of the state was traversed repeatedly; stations were established in the larger towns, and also in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
In 1836 Worcester became his headquarters, and his field of labor included the eastern part of Connecticut, the central and western parts of Massachusetts, and extended down the Blackstone Valley into Rhode Island.
In 1843 Father Fitton was put in charge of the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, Providence, and the following year Bishop Tyler assigned him to duty in Woonsocket, Pawtucket, and Newport. When Newport was made a parish in 1846, he became its pastor. While here he built the beautiful church of Our Lady of the Isle.
In compliance with the dying request of his friend, Father William Wiley, he was called from Newport to East Boston in 1855 to complete an edifice for the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, which the former had begun. He continued as pastor of this church until his death, twenty-six years later.
