14908 Main Street, Upper Marlboro, MD 20772 |
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14908 Main Street, Upper Marlboro, MD 20772 |
A BRIEF HISTORY Catholics of the Upper Marlboro area first saw their spiritual needs attended by priests of the Society of Jesus. They were followed by Dominicans, Carmelites, and Mill Hill Fathers (Josephites) who claimed St. Mary’s as their base of operations in Southern Maryland. Prior to the establishment of Prince George’s County, prominent Roman Catholics settled near Upper Marlboro on large tracts of land. When Upper Marlboro was established as a port town in 1708, it quickly became a commercial, political, and social center. As such it attracted Catholics of note. Among these was Daniel Carroll, son-in-law of Henry Darnall, (who contributed part of his property for the Town of Marlboro), and father of the patriarch of the Church in the Unites States, Archbishop John Carroll. (Darnall’s Chance, a restored and rebuilt house behind the present church, is purported to be the actual birthplace of John Carroll.) Maryland, of course, was founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, as a "free" colony— freedom to practice one’s religion— enabling Catholics to get away from the persecution and intolerance they were suffering in Protestant England. Unfortunately, by the time the town was founded, public exercise of the Catholic faith had already been legally prohibited in Maryland. However, out of respect for the traditional rights that were affixed to private property, colonial officials turned a blind eye when Catholic landowners ensured that the celebration of the Mass would continue by erecting "Mass-rooms" and "house-chapels" on their property. Situated on land granted to the Boone family in 1676, a chapel was maintained some ten miles from Upper Marlboro. This chapel served the Catholic community of Upper Marlboro as the immediate forerunner of both St. Mary’s Church as well as Holy Rosary Church.
Following the American Revolution, Catholics were once again free to worship publicly and churches began to spring up. Sometime early in the nineteenth century, the Catholics of Upper Marlboro, with the concurrence of the Jesuits at Whitemarsh, decided to build a church on a permanent site in the town. The cornerstone for the original St. Mary’s Church was laid on June 4, 1824. Because of a deed dispute between the Jesuits and the Archbishop of Baltimore, the church was not formally dedicated until April 5, 1829. It seated 450 people. The Jesuits continued to "attend" to St. Mary’s at Marlboro from Whitemarsh until 1856 when the congregation was placed under the care of the Dominicans. The pastor of St. Mary’s, Father Nicholas Young, O.P., also oversaw the construction of Most Holy Rosary Church in what is now Rosaryville. The cornerstone was laid on June 5, 1859. Holy Rosary remained a mission of St. Mary’s at Marlboro until 1966 when it was established as a parish. In February 1869, the Dominicans surrendered the Marlboro missions to the Carmelites. Due to health problems in the warm, humid climate, and to Archbishop Bayley’s refusal to give them title to the parish, they eventually gave up the Marlboro mission. The last of the congregations, orders, or societies of religious who ministered at Marlboro were the English missionaries of the St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart for the Foreign Missions (the Mill Hill Fathers; later reorganized as the Josephites). Their primary mission was to evangelize African Americans. Internal struggles within the Society, the deadly climate of Southern Maryland, and their frustration over dividing their ministry between Black and White Catholics, caused them to give up their mission in early 1879, just a few years after their arrival. After the departure of the Josephites, the parish of St. Mary’s came under the diocesan priests of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, some fifty years after the dedication of its first church.
In 1848, under the administration of the Archbishop of Baltimore, St. Mary of the Assumption was erected canonically as a parish to serve its present area plus what is today North Beach (St. Anthony’s), Forestville (Mount Calvary), and Rosaryville (Holy Rosary). In 1889, the first diocesan pastor was appointed, Fr. D. C. DeWulf (1880-1892). Father DeWulf was followed by Fathers Cunnane Trinkaus (who built the existing rectory), Schwallenberg, Lawless, and DiPaola. The old church was replaced in 1898 by the present Gothic structure of brick. The interior of the church was redesigned in 1956. The parish school was established under the administration of Msgr. Francis J. Loughran, who served as pastor for 43 years. The school has always been staffed by the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Today, St. Mary of the Assumption is a parish of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
This information is largely an abridgement of Mrs. Gloria Garner’s article, "St. Mary’s of Upper Marlboro, The Early Years," published in the July/September 1995 bulletin of the Washington Catholic Historical Society. It was part of a series on the 300th anniversary of Prince George’s County. Any inaccuracies are my own-- Fr. Jenkins.