The history of this Slovak national parish is inextricably linked with the history of the whole Catholic community in Yonkers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, repeated waves of Catholic immigrants transformed the city into a microcosm of the Catholic Church in urban America. For that reason the history of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity has been placed in this larger context. Because Yonkers was also a quintessential industrial city filled with smokestack industries, a subsidiary theme that runs throughout the book is the long struggle of the industrial workers of Yonkers, many of them Catholic immigrants like the Slovaks, to obtain better working conditions from their employers.
The early years of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity coincided with the awakening of long-dormant cultural and political national consciousness among the Slovak people, both in Europe and in America. Parishes such as Most Holy Trinity played a crucial role in the formation of this modern Slovak national consciousness. For that reason alone, the history of this parish has significance far beyond the boundaries of Yonkers, New York.
