Appalachian Figures
On Berger Street in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, a dark brick church rises from ground once worked by German Catholic farmers. Sacred Heart of Jesus Church began in the 1870s as a mission for immigrants who arrived through the Cincinnati Homestead Society. Parish history and the National Register of Historic Places describe how members made their own brick, hauled stone, and raised the 1880s building with their own labor, turning a small German enclave in Lawrence County into a permanent Catholic foothold in southern Middle Tennessee.
A century later, a federal nomination form for “German Catholic Churches and Cemeteries of Lawrence County, 1872–1930” listed the owner of Sacred Heart as “Bishop of Nashville,” naming Most Rev. James D. Niedergeses at the chancery on 21st Avenue South in Nashville. The document quietly connects a historic German parish to the man who grew up in its pews and eventually became the local bishop responsible for its care.
For the people of Lawrenceburg, that link is personal. Sacred Heart parishioners describe Bishop James D. Niedergeses as “our most famous parishioner,” a local farm boy raised in the parish who carried its rural German Catholic sensibility into statewide leadership.
A Farm Boy from a German Catholic Clan
James Daniel Niedergeses was born on 2 February 1917 in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, the first of seven children in a farm family of German Catholic descent. German family histories compiled by Kathleen Sudduth Niedergeses trace the wider Niedergesäss or Niedergeses clan from Silesia in Prussia to Cincinnati and then to Lawrence County, with immigrant patriarch Frank Bernard Niedergesäss anchoring the local line. In Lawrence County memory and in Depression era oral history, German Catholic families like the Beuerleins and Niedergeses were known as careful, capable farmers who usually avoided federal farm loans and relied on their own labor and community networks.
Find A Grave’s record of Bishop Niedergeses notes that he attended Sacred Heart School in Lawrenceburg and Lawrence County High School before leaving for seminary studies. The German Catholic world around him was dense. Sacred Heart in Lawrenceburg, Sacred Heart in nearby Loretto, and St. Joseph Church south of town formed a triangle of parishes serving Catholic settlers from Cincinnati, all later recognized on the National Register for their architecture and for the ethnic communities that built them.
In that landscape it was not unusual for boys to grow up trilingual in the language of the farm, of English civic life, and of Catholic ritual. What was unusual was for one of those farm sons to end up at the head of a statewide diocese.
From Lawrence County to the Semineries
The Diocese of Nashville’s official biography of Bishop Niedergeses traces a steady climb from Lawrenceburg to regional Catholic schools. As a teenager he left home for Father Ryan High School in Nashville, then one of the state’s principal Catholic secondary schools. From there he studied at St. Bernard College in Alabama and at St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, both common waystations for young men from rural parishes who felt called to the priesthood but needed broader academic formation.
He completed his priestly training at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West in Ohio. The diocesan biographical sketch and Catholic reference works agree that he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Nashville on 20 May 1944, at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville.
German language Catholic directories and the German Wikipedia entry on his life highlight how unusual this path was for a Lawrence County farm son in the 1930s. They emphasize that he was the eldest child of a farming family, that he left for high school in Nashville in 1935, and that he went on to years of seminary study out of state before returning to Tennessee as a diocesan priest.
Chattanooga Years and the Work of a Parish Priest
Before there was a Bishop Niedergeses, there was Father Niedergeses pacing the streets of Chattanooga. Both diocesan biographies and his obituary in the Tennessee Register agree that after ordination he spent eleven years in Chattanooga, first as an assistant and then as pastor, much of that time at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish.
Parish and diocesan histories remember him not as a distant scholar but as a working pastor who handled parish growth, hospital and prison chaplaincy, and civic duties. An East Tennessee Catholic retrospective on the Diocese of Knoxville notes that in the early 1960s Our Lady of Perpetual Help was one of the largest parishes in Tennessee, and that Father Niedergeses helped secure the land and funding for Notre Dame High School’s modern campus in Chattanooga. The parish’s own “About Us” history records that he became pastor in 1962, more than a decade before his appointment as bishop.
His obituary, carried in secular papers like The Tennessean and reprinted through the Tennessee Register, remembers him in those years as one of Chattanooga’s best known voices for ecumenism, the poor, and ethnic minorities.
Building New Parishes on the Tennessee Ridge
Long before he received a bishop’s ring, Father Niedergeses was already shaping Appalachian Catholic life through concrete acts of parish building. The best documented example sits not in Lawrence County itself but two counties northwest, in Houston County, Tennessee.
The history of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Tennessee Ridge tells how, in the 1970s, a small group of Catholics met in borrowed space at the local Methodist church while they hoped for a proper parish. When a Sister of Charity offered funds for a church in memory of her parents, negotiations began under Bishop Joseph Durick. Durick resigned before the gift was finalized, and it was his successor, Bishop James D. Niedergeses, who completed the negotiations, personally visited Houston County to help select a ten acre site along State Route 49, and hired a Nashville architectural firm to design the new building.
The same parish chronicle records that Bishop Niedergeses presided at the groundbreaking in July 1976 and returned in December 1977 to dedicate the new church, which the community had chosen to name for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American born saint.
Other parish histories across Middle and East Tennessee preserve similar moments that help reconstruct his pastoral map. At St. Alphonsus Parish in Crossville on the Cumberland Plateau, the parish’s “About Our Parish” notes that he dedicated a new church building in 1983, at a time when Crossville was shifting from small mission to growing parish center. In the upper East Tennessee town of Greeneville, an East Tennessee Catholic feature on St. Henry Parish recalls that in 1981 he formally elevated the Greeneville mission to parish status, a small but significant step for Catholics in a region where their numbers were often thin.
The National Register thematic nomination for German Catholic churches in Lawrence County provides a paper trail that ties all this parish building back to his home turf. The form lists Sacred Heart in Lawrenceburg as a historic property, with the “Bishop of Nashville” as legal owner, and situates Sacred Heart, Sacred Heart in Loretto, and St. Joseph Church as a cluster of German Catholic institutions that survived into the late twentieth century under his formal care.
“Come Lord Jesus”: A Bishop from Lawrenceburg
On 8 April 1975, Pope Paul VI appointed James Daniel Niedergeses as the ninth Bishop of Nashville. He was ordained and installed as bishop on 20 May 1975. Reference works like Catholic Hierarchy and GCatholic summarize the dates and note that he served as diocesan bishop until 13 October 1992, when his resignation for health reasons was accepted and he became bishop emeritus.
His episcopal motto, “Come Lord Jesus,” points toward the Book of Revelation and hints at a spirituality shaped by expectation and patience. Heraldic references and later articles about the crosier he carried at his ordination show that his personal coat of arms bore that motto and that his staff was hand carved by a cousin from Tennessee cedar, built in two sections so it could travel easily as he crossed the state.
The Diocese of Nashville’s own sketch of his ministry describes him as a teacher, hospital chaplain, diocesan consultor, and pastor before his appointment, then as a bishop who took on ecumenical assignments and helped structure diocesan archives, Catholic Charities, and pastoral planning. It lists awards from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Tennessee Association of Churches that recognized his work in interfaith cooperation.
An obituary based on diocesan reporting adds flesh to those lines. It recalls that he was remembered as a “farm boy” who liked to visit parishes in an ordinary car, ate at parish potlucks, and spent long days on the road visiting small communities across Middle and East Tennessee.
Grandfather of the Diocese of Knoxville
When Pope John Paul II erected the Diocese of Knoxville in 1988, carving East Tennessee away from Nashville, the move was both administrative and personal. For more than a century, Knoxville and the surrounding Appalachian counties had belonged to the Diocese of Nashville. As bishop of Nashville at the time, James D. Niedergeses worked with Rome and local clergy to design the new diocese, supply clergy and resources, and hand over territory that included parishes he had himself nurtured.
A diocesan history notes that because of his role in the new diocese’s creation, he became known informally as the “grandfather of the Diocese of Knoxville.” East Tennessee Catholic coverage of a recent “Founders Mass” for the diocese preserves Bishop James Vann Johnston Jr.’s memory of the way Bishop Niedergeses would return after the split and “beam with pride and joy” when he saw how the younger diocese was flourishing.
That grandfatherly role did not end with structures. In 1990, Bishop Niedergeses ordained a young Lawrenceburg native, James Mark Beckman, to the priesthood at the Cathedral of the Incarnation. Decades later, Pope Francis appointed Beckman as the fourth Bishop of Knoxville. Articles profiling Beckman’s appointment stress that he is the second Lawrenceburg native to become a bishop and that his episcopal crosier is the same hand carved staff first given to Bishop Niedergeses in 1975.
In that sense the Lawrenceburg farm boy who helped create the Diocese of Knoxville still walks down its cathedral aisle, even in death, as his crosier is placed in the hands of a younger bishop from the same hometown.
Ecumenist in an Evangelical State
Tennessee in the mid twentieth century was often described as firmly Protestant, yet Catholic leadership quietly invested in ecumenical dialogue. Bishop Niedergeses stood at the center of that work. The Diocese of Nashville’s biography notes that he served on the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs as liaison with the Southern Baptist Convention.
A United States Conference of Catholic Bishops news release from the 1970s announces that Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic scholars were beginning a series of dialogues on the nature of the church. It names Bishop James D. Niedergeses of Nashville as the Roman Catholic co chair of the consultation. A pamphlet from one of those regional conferences, “Theology and Experience of Worship,” lists him as the bishops’ liaison to the Southern Baptist Convention and prints his opening address to participants, where he talks about dialogue as mutual listening and as hard work worth doing because “God is in it.”
His ecumenical commitments extended beyond Baptist Catholic conversations. A scholarly article on Christian responses to the United Nations’ controversial 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism notes that Bishop Niedergeses of Nashville joined Bishop Carroll Dozier of Memphis and other Christian leaders in signing a statement that rejected the resolution as an injustice to Jews and a potential spur to renewed antisemitism.
These public stances match the portrait painted in his obituary, which remembers him as an outspoken advocate for the poor and for racial justice in Chattanooga and Nashville, and in a later thesis on the church and the modern prison system that cites him among Tennessee bishops who opposed capital punishment.
Pro Life Advocacy and the Work of Retirement
Retirement did not remove Bishop Niedergeses from public life. GCatholic’s necrology lists him as bishop emeritus of Nashville from 1992 until his death in 2007, while diocesan histories note that he assisted his successors with confirmations, ordinations, and ceremonial duties.
In the early 2000s, Priests for Life newsletters carried his name on their Advisory Board of Bishops, identifying him as bishop emeritus of Nashville among a group of retired and active prelates who lent their support to national pro life advocacy.
East Tennessee Catholic features remember a more human side. Father Paul Hostettler, a long time priest who died at age one hundred, recalled playing golf with Bishop Niedergeses and spoke of him as a friend as much as a superior. A recent reflection on priestly vocation in the same newspaper notes that Bishop Niedergeses favored a particular prayer that describes priests as “ardent yet gentle servants of the Gospel,” a phrase that captured his own approach to ministry.
Lawrenceburg Roots and German Catholic Memory
To understand why this bishop belongs in Appalachian history, it helps to return to Lawrence County and the German Catholic world that shaped him. Sacred Heart Church in Lawrenceburg and its companion parishes in Loretto and St. Joseph were founded to serve German settlers who arrived through the Cincinnati Homestead Society in the late nineteenth century. They built frame churches and schools, then replaced them with brick and stone structures dedicated in the 1880s and 1910s, all later recognized by the National Register.
Local genealogical compilations and archives in Lawrence County show how families like the Niedergeses, Rusts, Feldhauses, and others interwove through marriage and shared land. The Lawrence County Archives’ genealogy resources list Our German Heritage by Kathleen Sudduth Niedergeses alongside transcribed journals and family histories that document German Catholic life from the 1870s through the early twentieth century.
One oral history from the region describes German Catholic farmers as careful stewards who rarely needed government loans and who built stores, farms, and churches with a mix of cash, sweat, and mutual aid. Sacred Heart parish histories echo that picture, recalling how parishioners made bricks, erected the church with their own skilled labor, and welcomed teaching sisters to staff the school where a young James Niedergeses learned his catechism.
A Tennessee Register meditation on Holy Week written at Sacred Heart in Lawrenceburg, preserved in diocesan archives, calls Bishop Niedergeses “our most famous parishioner” and reminds readers that he was raised “right here in Lawrenceburg.”
Even in unexpected places, his name appears alongside that German Catholic milieu. A recent inquiry on the National Archives’ History Hub page from a researcher exploring the story of a German prisoner of war held in Tennessee in the 1940s mentions finding a family note with the address of “Reverend James D. Niedergeses” on Terrace Place in Nashville. The note suggests that this young Tennessee priest may have corresponded with or assisted the POW’s family, a small piece of evidence that hints at pastoral ties between German Americans and German prisoners in wartime.
Death, Calvary Cemetery, and the Long View of a Farm Boy Bishop
Bishop James Daniel Niedergeses resigned as Bishop of Nashville in October 1992 and entered a long retirement as bishop emeritus. He died on 16 November 2007 at age ninety at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville after a lengthy illness.
GCatholic’s necrology, diocesan remembrance lists, and Calvary Cemetery features in the Tennessee Register agree that he was buried in Calvary Cemetery in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, returning his body to the same German Catholic soil that had produced his vocation. Today his grave stands among the stones of relatives and fellow parishioners, a bishop’s cross carved on a marker in a small Tennessee cemetery rather than in a grand urban crypt.
Find A Grave’s entry links him to siblings such as Edward Jerome Niedergeses and to the wider Lawrence County family cluster, reinforcing the picture of a bishop who never truly left home, even as he served a diocese that stretched from the Kentucky border to the Great Smoky Mountains.
Why Bishop Niedergeses Matters for Appalachian History
At first glance, the story of Bishop James D. Niedergeses might seem like internal Catholic history rather than Appalachian history. Yet his life sits squarely at the crossroads of both.
He grew up in a transplanted German Catholic community that turned Lawrence County hillsides into farms and filled the brick nave of Sacred Heart Church. He carried that rural sensibility into Chattanooga and across East Tennessee, where he built parishes, raised funds for schools, and welcomed small Catholic communities into the mainstream of civic life.
As bishop he helped shape Catholic institutional life in a predominantly Protestant Appalachian region, spearheading the creation of the Diocese of Knoxville and earning the affectionate title “grandfather of the diocese” from those who watched him share priests, money, and structures so that East Tennessee Catholics could have a bishop of their own.
He was a farm boy who spent his retirement years on advisory boards for national pro life ministries, a local pastor who served as liaison to the Southern Baptist Convention, and a German American who joined ecumenical efforts to reject antisemitism in world politics.
For Appalachian historians, his life provides a rare thread that ties together immigrant settlement in Lawrence County, the spread of Catholic institutions along Tennessee’s ridges and valleys, the ecumenical stirrings of the late twentieth century South, and the ongoing story of how local people from small parishes shape statewide and regional religious life. From the brick walls of Sacred Heart on Berger Street to the crosier now carried in Knoxville’s cathedral, the imprint of Bishop James D. Niedergeses runs quietly but firmly through the Catholic history of Appalachian Tennessee.
Sources & Further Reading
National Register of Historic Places nomination forms for Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, Lawrenceburg, and for “German Catholic Churches and Cemeteries of Lawrence County, 1872–1930,” including ownership listings that name Bishop James D. Niedergeses as Bishop of Nashville and describe the brick church built by parishioners with their own labor. Wikidata+3NPGallery+3NPGallery+3
Parish history of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and related materials on Sacred Heart Church in Loretto and St. Joseph Church in St. Joseph, documenting the German Catholic settlement, church construction, and later recognition on the National Register. Sacred Heart and St. Joseph Parishes+3Wikipedia+3Wikipedia+3
“Our History,” St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Parish, Tennessee Ridge, Tennessee, narrating Bishop Niedergeses’ role in completing negotiations for a donor funded church, selecting the site, arranging design and construction, and presiding at groundbreaking and dedication in the 1970s. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Parish+1
Parish histories and diocesan features from East Tennessee Catholic and other outlets, including coverage of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Chattanooga, St. Henry Parish in Rogersville, St. Alphonsus Parish in Crossville, and St. Patrick in Morristown, which highlight Bishop Niedergeses’ role in building and elevating parishes across East Tennessee. St. Alphonsus Catholic Church+5East Tennessee Catholic+5East Tennessee Catholic+5
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops materials on Southern Baptist Roman Catholic dialogues, including news releases naming Bishop James D. Niedergeses as Roman Catholic co chair and the Kansas City pamphlet “Theology and Experience of Worship,” which prints his opening address and lists him as liaison to the Southern Baptist Convention. USCCB+3USCCB+3Distant Reader+3
Priests for Life newsletters from the mid 2000s listing Bishop James D. Niedergeses as Bishop Emeritus of Nashville on the Advisory Board of Bishops, illustrating his continued involvement in national pro life advocacy during retirement. Priests for Life+2Priests for Life+2
Tennessee Register and diocesan obituary materials circulated through alt.obituaries, including “Bishop James D. Niedergeses, 90, ninth bishop of Nashville,” which summarize his travels across Middle and East Tennessee, his work with Catholic Charities and diocesan archives, and his role in spearheading the creation of the Diocese of Knoxville. Assets Service+3Google Groups+3Google Groups+3
Diocese of Nashville “Former Bishops” page and related diocesan articles, which provide dates of ordination, episcopal appointment, retirement, and awards for ecumenical work, as well as snapshots of his service as teacher, chaplain, consultor, and pastor before 1975. Diocese of Nashville+2Diocese of Nashville+2
GCatholic and Catholic Hierarchy entries for Bishop James Daniel Niedergeses, which compile data from the Annuario Pontificio regarding his birth in Lawrenceburg on 2 February 1917, priestly ordination on 20 May 1944, episcopal appointment in April 1975, resignation in October 1992, and death in November 2007. Catholic Hierarchy+3GCatholic+3Catholic Hierarchy+3
English and German Wikipedia entries on James Daniel Niedergeses and on the Diocese of Knoxville, useful as tertiary overviews, especially for his upbringing as the eldest of seven children in a farm family, his seminary itinerary, and the note that he became known as the “grandfather of the Diocese of Knoxville” because of his role in creating the new diocese. Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2
Find A Grave memorials for Bishop James Daniel Niedergeses and relatives such as Edward Jerome Niedergeses, which help confirm dates, places of birth and death, burial in Calvary Cemetery at Lawrenceburg, and immediate family connections in the local German Catholic community. Find a Grave+2Find a Grave+2
“Our German Heritage: A History of the Niedergeses, Rust, Patt, Scheele and Other Related Families,” by Kathleen Sudduth Niedergeses, along with Lawrence County Archives listings and related local genealogical compilations, which trace the broader German Catholic clan from Prussia through Cincinnati to Lawrence County and provide context for the family world into which Bishop Niedergeses was born. Lorette Hotel+3FamilySearch+3Lawrence County Archives+3
Bill Powell oral history excerpts and other local narratives on German Catholic farmers in Lawrence County, which shed light on the reputation of families like the Niedergeses for careful farming, low debt, and strong community networks during the Depression era. www.slideshare.net+1
East Tennessee Catholic coverage of Bishop Mark Beckman’s life and ordination as Bishop of Knoxville, and Nashville Catholic reporting on his appointment, which stress his Lawrenceburg roots, his ordination by Bishop Niedergeses in 1990, and the reuse of Bishop Niedergeses’ cedar crosier at his episcopal ordination. East Tennessee Catholic+6Diocese of Knoxville+6East Tennessee Catholic+6