The following is from Benjamin H Throop's 1895 A Half Century in Scranton,1
The adherents of the Romish Church were first supplied with missionaries from Susquehanna County, and, when they were numerous enough to warrant the erection of a place of worship, they cast about for an eligible location, and finally selected a site on the banks of the Roaring Brook, back of the company's steam saw mill, with ground for a cemetery contiguous. Here they worshiped and buried their dead, until about ten years after the borough of Scranton was surveyed and plotted into lots, and blocks, when the church was changed to the southeast corner of Franklin Avenue and Spruce Street, and the burial place was secured on the west side of the river, back of Hyde Park, in the addition that I was then making to the town plot. The church edifice was constructed under the supervision of the late, lamented Father Whitty, and the old church was taken away, as were the dead whose remains reposed near it. At the time the first church was erected, Scranton was a wild and uncultivated place, covered chiefly with a thick growth of weeds, some large and some small, and on the whole, with little exception, north of Lackawanna Avenue was swamp, pond and wood. The second church was occupied until the new and elegant Cathedral was erected, in 1865. It now stands as a monument to Father Whitty. The Cathedral, the Episcopal residence, the convent and college, and the rest of the parochial buildings constitute some of the valuable property of the city, and Rt Rev Bishop O'Hara has, in the important diocese over which he so wisely presides, congregations (sic) in this city and adjoining townships that number many thousands.