1909 – 1951 (June 30)
Edward Joseph Merwarth, son of Edward Merwarth and Susan Gallagher, was born in Easton, PA on August 22, 1909. He received his early education in the parochial schools there and in Bethlehem, PA. After graduating from Bethlehem Catholic High School, he entered the House of Postulants on Staten Island, NY. He was received into the novitiate on September 11, 1930, and professed simple vows on September 12, 1931. He studied at Saint Mary’s at Villanova, PA and the Augustinian College in Washington, DC, and was solemnly professed on September 12, 1934. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Immaculate Conception Shrine in Washington on June 7, 1938.
After ordination, Father Merwarth was assigned as an assistant at Saint Augustine Parish in Detroit, Michigan in 1939. He was affiliated to the Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel at its establishment in 1941. He later taught and was athletic director at Saint Thomas High School in Rockford, Il., until 1947, when he was assigned to Saint Monica Seminary, Oconomowoc, WI., where he was Director of the Seminary Guild for the Midwest Province. In 1949 he was assigned to teach at Saint Rita High School in Chicago.
While visiting his brother and sisters in Bethlehem, Pa., Father Merwarth was taken ill and was admitted to Sacred Heart Hospital there. He was later transferred to Philadelphia’s Misericordia Hospital, where he died on June 30, 1951, at the age of 41 of heart disease. He is buried in the Community Cemetery at Villanova.
