ITALIAN MISSION IN AMBLER

The year is 1908, and several men and women are meeting with a group of young Italians gathered outside a store in South Ambler. Escorting the young people to the store's basement, they oversee the founding of Ambler's Italian Mission, with 30 children present at the Sunday School's first session. 

Weeks earlier, during Sunday service at Ambler's Methodist Church, some ladies are aware of three young Italian boys outside, apparently attracted by the sounds coming from within.  Invited to join in worship, they decline, possibly out of shyness. 

One of these ladies, Mrs. Ellsworth Posey, suggests to other members that perhaps a mission should be established in the neighborhood of these boys from across the tracks. 

With this in mind, she and a social worker friend rent a  room in the basement of a Chestnut Street store for $5.00 a month. Under the guidance of church members, attendance increases rapidly, and a large adult class is organized.  To communicate with these older Italians, in America only a few years, it is felt that a pastor fluent in their language is a necessity. 

With the Methodist Home Mission unable to supply such a person, Ambler's Presbyterian Church steps in, arranging for the Philadelphia Presbytery to furnish an Italian-speaking pastor, Mr. Barano.  Support comes from Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church when a school is set up in their building for teaching English to the adult Italians. 

Soon outgrowing their quarters in the store basement, the Mission erects a large tent on a lot provided rent-free by Doctor Mattison, at the corner of Butler Avenue and  Locust Street.    With the Italian missionary Rev.Barano leading the group, a well-known Ambler School teacher, Miss Mae Rynear, becomes very active teaching Italian children in the tent, many of whom follow her later into the Presbyterian Sunday School. 

Soon it's realized a more substantial structure is needed when a violent wind storm destroys their tent.  A frame building 24 x 48 feet, and costing $800, is completed in 1914, the funds being provided by the five local Protestant churches and by Mattison's partner, Henry G. Keasbey, living in France at the time. The building, cold and drafty in the Winter,  is heated by a pot-bellied stove.   Foes of the church continually harass the congregation by throwing stones at the building during services and breaking windows, making it necessary  that they be covered with heavy chicken wire. 

The congregation loses Rev. Barano, when he returns home in 1915 to fight for his native Italy in the first World War.  Michael Frasca replaces him, serving until 1924. 

During Frasca's service period, the congregation loses a devoted friend and teacher, Miss Anna Renner, one of six Ambler residents killed in a train wreck in 1919 just below the Fort Washington station. 

In December of 1924, Reverend P. Alfredo Della Loggia becomes pastor of the Italian Mission, having been ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1923 at Carbondale, Pa. The depression years bring on a serious problem when Doctor Mattison is forced to sell the land housing the Chapel. This makes it necessary for the congregation to dismantle the building  and move it to another location, or erect a new Chapel.  During Della Loggia's pastorate, a welcome gift of $5,000 is received from the will of Maria Virginia Cibotti of Philadelphia.  This is used toward the purchase of a lot on North Main Street, where a chapel is erected and renamed Ambler Presbyterian Chapel, with dedication services held in 1939. 

Rev. Della Loggia serves until his retirement in 1950, being succeeded by Rev. Cyrus Scapellati.  It's during Scapellati's time with the congregation that the Italian-language service is discontinued.   In 1962, Rev. Allan Kinloch becomes the first non-Italian Pastor. 

Financial difficulties make it necessary for the Ambler Chapel and two other small churches to join in June of 1966, forming the Church on the Mall at Plymouth Meeting, with Rev Allan Kinloch as their Pastor. Thus ends the life span of the Italian Mission in Ambler. 

(My thanks to Lillian Della Loggia Vandegrift, daughter of Rev. Della Loggia, and to Valdo Dragani, long-time member of the Church, for assistance in writing this very brief history of Ambler's Italian Mission.