The Whole Country About Them Was Little More Than A Prairie:
A History of St. Aloysius Parish in Washington
Part One: Culture and context
Chapter 1 Shaping a National Capital :
Washington the Political Compromise, Land and Design
Chapter 2: The City and Catholicism
Chapter 3 Jesuits Privileged and Persecuted:
Parochial Life, Slavery and The Suppression
Chapter 4 Washington By 1859: Established, Growing And Still In Peril
Part Two: Founding the Parish
Chapter 5 No College without a Church Washington Seminary and the Disappointment of St. Patrick’s
Chapter 6 Let Us Have a Church Downtown
Chapter 7 A Gift in Search of a Beneficiary
Chapter 8 The New Gonzaga Corporation and Its Obligations
A history of St. Aloysius Parish necessarily requires a substantial prehistory because the none of the usual factors such as the founding of a new city, massive in-migration of Catholics or the necessity of splitting an overcrowded parish fully explain the decision to create a Jesuit parish north of the U.S. Capitol. The City of Washington was even after seventy years little more than a collection of dispersed communities. Once established the parish has lived through three major epochs of nearly equal length influenced by the changing city nation and neighborhood.
The city of Washington, while intended to project high principles grew from hard-nosed political deals reflecting nation divisions and personal agendas. United by the Constitution and George Washington’s force of personality, states and citizens held opposing views of the power of the federal government, rooted in regional colonial experience religion and economics. A capital born in the midst of slavery could only find enough friends if it promised to revive a drooping economy. Promoters oversold the value of land to Congress and undersold the lots to debt burdened speculators, leaving the city unfinished and its finances and those of its promoters in ruins.
While colonists had often disparaged Catholics and feared slaves they placed the Capital in the midst of both which affected each other and the city. While not really a Catholic enclave, Maryland was more Catholic than others areas of the new nation. The absence of a bishop and the presence of the Jesuits shaped a unique Catholic culture both defensive of the Church but oddly independent from it. Catholics dependent on property for their rights and support and long distrustful of radical politics which so often attacked the Church were suspicious of abolitionists even defending property in slaves. At the very time they found themselves caught between their loyalty to both their regional culture and their national government, huge numbers of new immigrant Catholics challenged their assumptions.
Jesuit roots in Maryland gave the institutions of the Society a Jesus friends and benefactors. The Reestablishment of the Society after years it which had been suppressed left the Society in the Maryland Province short handed and seeking to define their mission in the new nation and Church. While Jesuits served in numerous parishes meeting immediate pastoral needs, the desire to establish Colleges dominated apostolic planning in the mid nineteenth century. St. Aloysius would benefit from the gifts of land and money presented to Jesuits, but the future of the mission of the parish took on a direction arising from larger ambitions than a parish.
Sectional tension and the Civil War, had an immediate impact on the parish. James Buchanan a supporter of the Dred Scott decision and the President who took no action against the early acts of Secession had signed the legislation creating the Jesuit corporation which would own the land, the church and the schools of I St. While he was attending the Dedication of the Church on October 16, 1859, John Brown and his supporters were taking position to seize the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. The because of its open terrain the area around the church became a center for military hospitals, one of which was built by the parishioners of St. Aloysius. While Mercy sisters tended the Union Wounded and the Church cooperated with the Quartermaster General in providing hospital beds, Catholic distrust of radical reformers and nervousness about Protestant dominated governments engaging in moral crusades as well as the deep involvement of Maryland planters in slavery often placed some parishioners on the side of the Confederacy and Slavery.
Despite the activity of the Civil War From it’s founding in 1859 until the end of the century St. Aloysius Church stood in an underdeveloped section of the city. Its unseemly location delayed the move of Gonzaga College to it new home and then seemed to endanger the College’s survival. The presence of the Church along with the railroad station and Government prinmting Office promoted what development there was. The Parish itself grew in members and service to the larger city. The parish was well known and well attended, very quickly, huge number of persons attended parish missions, confirmation, May procession and other events. The costs of building College and Church ahead of demand forced the Society to constantly mortgage or sell much land given to establish the Church and College. Only at the end of the century when the neighborhood was fairly well populated and the parish had helped raise money for the Jesuit Residence and the College Hall were the futures of Gonzaga and the parish assured.
During the first third of its history St. Aloysius cooperated with the mission of Gonzaga, but they developed a vibrant parish life of Spiritual renewal, a range of cultural activities and schools for the education of the young. The constant need to raise money for the burgeoning plant and activities produced social events such as the annual Fair that served to draw thousands to the parish and Swampoodle. When Msgr Satolli established residence for the Apostolic Delegate in the old Douglas Row on I St. St. Aloysius achieved a prominence long hoped for by its founders. Throughout this period Parish life grew on two racially segregated tracks. African Americans belonged to St. Aloysius but according to the practice of the life, belonged to separate organization within the parish. The lack of integration of African Americans into the full life of the parish led eventually to formation of Holy Redeemer Parish.
In the second Epoch the newly settled northern precincts of the City of Washington provided a vibrant Catholic population to sustain and be sustained by the parish and the “College.” Through most of the first half of the twentieth the parish served a vibrant neighborhood whose residents walked or took trolleys to work on the Hill, at the GPO and the rail yards. Two world wars brought waves of temporary residents, but the increasing ease of transportation and discomfort with African American immigrants from the South set the stage for the deterioration depopulation of urban centers throughout the country and Washington in particular.
In the third epoch the commercialization of formerly residential neighborhoods in the inner core, the growth of outer suburbs and white flight depopulated the neighborhood and required the parish and schools to redefine themselves. City plans for the Northwest One Redevelopment Area called for demolishing everything from H Street to M Street, including the local churches and educational institutions. The threat to the very survival of local institutions forced them to consider how they might serve the neighborhood if they stayed. The pressure for action became more pronounced following the 1968 riots. Fr. McKenna’s fortuitous arrival at that very time gave the parish an inspired leader in an area, in which the parish had been severely lacking in the past. Since that time the parish has sought to both serve a larger non-resident population and the residents of the neighborhood.
Chapter One Shaping a National Capital :
Washington the Political Compromise, the Land and the Design
Most of us tend to assume that what we saw and experienced early in life is the way things had always been before that. We might think that St. Aloysius was always an urban parish. After all it has always been in the capital of the United States surrounded by awe-inspiring avenues and neoclassical buildings. We might say oh well of course I know there were once blocks of row houses around the parish instead of parking lots and office buildings. It would seem that any such church in such a city would be a sure success because of its location. The land around St. Aloysius Church would have been prime real estate at virtually any time and certainly a bustling Irish community by 1859.
In reality, the future of the city and the parish were anything but certain in October of 1859, but their histories were bound together by more than uncertainty. Competing interests and earnest friends positioned both where they are today. Those locations would be mocked for decades to come but would in the long run would be far better than their critics could have imagined. The births of both city and parish in compromise were fortuitous yet tenuous. Politics, land values and the continuing legacy of slavery shaped their early history. Promises to produce ideal institutions with little or no cost bound them both into debt and the constant need to finish what was well begun but half done.
THE POLITICS
The experiences of the Congress in Philadelphia and the unique federation of states with dual centers of sovereignty demanded that the Capital be a new city beyond the power of any state. The separation of powers within the Federal government demanded multiple centers of population and power within the capital city. The actual site on the Potomac arose from geographic limits and sectional conflict. The compromise location achieved in Congressional horse trading succeeded through the will of one man.
Mocked during its early years, Washington, the city, seemed at first to be one of the great follies of Washington the person, perhaps even a sign of his own greed and poor judgment. The site of the future capital is often written of as little more than a swamp. The problem was not so much the location or its proximity to water for it was actually on solid ground covered with forests and farmland. While hot and humid, the area was amazingly healthy before its terrain was rutted, graded and fouled with untreated human waste. The plan of L’Enfant also much criticized has proven to be amazing as it reached maturity. The problem was overselling it’s virtues while underestimating the costs and the time needed to fulfill it.
Congress had fled Philadelphia more than once to avoid British troops, typhoid fever and mutineers. While using one of the two existing major cities (New York and Philadelphia) would have saved on costs and provided instant housing and office space, it would have bound the new government to established interests. Numerous smaller cities and town including Wilmington, Delaware; Annapolis Maryland and Germantown Pennsylvania all got attention but would have presented many of the problems of the Potomac site. ( cf. Brodewich 11-30 )
Advocates of building a new city believed that it would stimulate new wealth by increasing land values, give the federal government free range in shaping the space to its needs and allow the Father of his country to create a symbol equal to the nation’s own sense of purpose. With plenty of undeveloped land, several sites had their own sets of investors, supporters and lobbyists. At on point, Congress even passed a law to establish the seat of government on the Susquehanna River. The supporters of Philadelphia and other sites in Pennsylvania overplayed their political hand and anything much farther north would be well beyond the limit acceptable to even moderate southerners. James Madison gave himself and the Potomac crowd months of maneuvering time when he introduced a minor but necessary amendment to the 1789 Residence Bill ( setting location of the Capital) which seemed ready to pass both houses. ( Bordewich 27)
The next great break for a Potomac site was the now famous dinner for Alexander Hamilton hosted by Thomas Jefferson in the temporary capital, New York. Hamilton wanted to have the new government exercise and gain more power by assuming Revolutionary debts of the states. Such a debt transfer would certainly burden the Federal government with debt but would ironically provide support to the federal government by sowing the power of the central government and encouraging bond-holders up and down the coast to accept Federal taxes needed to repay them. Jefferson feared such a powerful central government but preferred a southern home for the government. He hoped to influence the government with southern culture. This meant removing federal offices from the money centers and making southern ways including slavery less threatening to northerners. (c.f Ellis pp 48-80)
While the publicly disputed issue between Hamilton and Jefferson was debt, the silent issue hiding behind every national issue was slavery. While most colonies had allowed slavery, the demands of Americans for freedom caused the new northern states to phase out slavery. The Quakers, who had recently demanded an end to slave owning by their members, petitioned the first Congress meeting in New York to act against the slave trade and encourage abolition. A Congress surrounded by abolitionist Quakers in Philadelphia or any other north states involved in the gradual abolition of slavery would mean a relentless pressure for the national government to move against slavery. While abolitionist sentiment existed in Maryland and Virginia, it had little chance of immediate success and a southern city under the control of Congress would surely protect slaves of members of Congress and the Executive. (Ellis 81-119).
Jefferson’s deal to support the assumption of state debts and Hamilton’s support for the Potomac capital sealed the passage of the Residence Act which settled on a Potomac site. No mere law, however, could guarantee the eventual move of Congress to the Potomac or permanently settle the issue of slavery, but it advanced one prospect while seeking to delay the other. The spreading ideology of freedom, and freedom’s identity with protecting private property would conflict here as they would repeatedly in American history. Few slave owners were comfortable with others making the decision for them. Even George Washington who would free slaves in his will, sent his personal servant out of Pennsylvania periodically so that they would not fall under the manumission laws of Pennsylvania. (cf. Bordewich 31-52).
Starting with rural agricultural land rather than an existing commercial city would allow the new national government to create a new city symbolic of the larger nation, formed in the ideology of its founders. The city would give visitors a taste of future grandeur and natural greatness of the nation. The distribution of branches of government throughout the city and the city’s separation from the states would embody the division of powers between the state and federal government and the separation of power within the federal government. The Residence Act of 1790 left the final site selection somewhere Great Falls to the Eastern Branch (the Anacostia River) to President George Washington. Rather than chose the existing port of Georgetown or the highly defensible bluffs beyond it, Washington chose open country for the Federal City, to be named after him. Georgetown would be part of the ten mile square District of Columbia, but was well outside of the Federal City and the daily flow of government business.
THE LAND
Washington was a strikingly beautiful area and free of the epidemics that plagued exiting cities. Many of the low lying flood prone areas west of the Washington Monument, down to Hains Point and around the tidal basin were products of later drainage and fill projects to expand the natural plains. While Goose Creek, later Tiber creek entered the city from the northeast crossing the area of North Capitol and Massachusetts flowing into the present Mall area just a few feet above sea level, it was by no means a swamp. It was a healthy creek providing fresh water as did the Rock Creek arising in the northwest. These healthy beautiful rolling hills would for the better part of a century become rutted, the creeks would fill with untreated human waste and the newly formed ponds, canals and drainage ditches would be home to typhoid, mosquitoes and cholera. The problem was not the land it was the faulty development. (Green 134-135). Thornton the winner of a competition to design the Capitol described the future city as “the most beautiful I have seen... It is much like Constantinople... The country round rises in all the diversity of hill and dale that imagination can paint.” (Bordewich 194 and Links to relief map of DC and computer simulation)
Since the area had been settled by Europeans a century and a half earlier the land already belonged to farmers and planters. The property lines did not follow the straight lines of an urban grid, much less the angled Avenues of L’Enfant. Some of the land such as the Duddington Manor estate of Daniel Carroll had been held by the same family for generations. Other land had been acquired by married, divided among siblins or sold within a small circle of Marylanders such was the land of Notley Young and Benjamon Oden in North West. (Map of Original land owners). It was all basically farm land laid out for the visual effect of the houses and efficiency of the fields rolling over hills. The availability of real estate in land drew the first settlers and has continued to promise wealth to virtually every generation. Washington real estate would make and break many over two centuries. Those who sell land always regret in the long term, those who buy it often regret it in the short term.
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
Nothing is more politically popular than promising to benefit society and individuals without cost to either, land is usually the lure. Cash poor landowners like to think that the value in their land should be available to them so that they can develop the land and have even more wealth. Mortgages on land seldom provide sufficient value to provide capital for improvements, they also burden the owner with debt. Investors can increase the value of land by investing in improvements, but they would prefer to benefit from al the gain in land value. In building a new national capital Congress sought to benefit from their choice of site by getting land and buildings without cost. Landowners needed to gain as well is they were going to give up their country estates and much of their future capital value.
T Governments often seek to lessen the burden on taxpayers for social overhead capital investments by trying to capture the increased value of land which results from capital improvements. Cashing in on improvements which were as yet only dreams was destined for trouble. The beautiful simplicity of the plan depended on finding investors with ready cash who could benefit over a period of years as the city developed. Like most speculators, the developers of Washington hoped to use other people’s money and sell all or most of their land quickly at a great profit. This could never be. Maryland and Virginia would cede jurisdiction over the territory without compensation and contribute nearly $200,000 for the construction. Other money would be raised from the sale of building lots - land that the government did not yet own.
Decades later, when Congress gave away millions of acres of western land for railroad development they hoped to break even by selling land they retained for twice the original asking price but they planed to do so over a long period of time. The deal offered to the original 19 proprietors of Washington was the reverse of railroad deal. Land owners in Washington would sign over half of their land to the Congress which would in turn increase the value of what they retained value by transforming fields into a bustling and ever expanding Capital. The new city would be surveyed into building lots. The federal commissioners charged with building the city would sell their lots and proprietors could sell, develop or hold their own. The government would also pay about $67 an acre for additional land for federal buildings. That price which seems ridiculous today already represented an increase of four or five fold over previous prices but the future market increases would be much greater but maddeningly slow. In Washington, the land owners might wait but the government needed to sell the land before there was a capitol so that there might be one.
The sudden sale of tens of thousands of lots could not help but depress real estate prices and it did. If all the lots in Washington had been sold for ready cash at the predicted prices, the city might have been completed at no cost and the land owners would be rich beyond their wildest dreams. Unfortunately such was not to be. It would take just about a century before homes, boarding houses and hotels would fill in most of the area below Boundary Street. Today a lot in the old Federal city would sell for more than the original estimated cost of $100,000 for the President’s House, but general inflation has been 2336% since then as well. (http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/faculty-research/sahr/cv2007.pdf). There was however no immediate demand for thousands upon thousands of building lots. The primary buyers were cash-strapped speculators who demanded discounts and a spread out schedule of payments, on which many would default. The failure of land auctions left the Washington City Commissioners without enough money to build the city in a timely manner and each delay devalued the land and the city’s prospects even more.
As land sales foundered, a young brash minor diplomat who made a fortune speculating in discounted Congressional bonds arrived in town with an entrepreneurial fervor. James Greenleaf hoped to multiply his money and that of Dutch bankers who who trusted him to acquire huge tracts of the new city. By the time Greenleaf made it to Washington the speculations were all ready pushing the limits of legality and reason. Developers without resources sought to use lotteries, associations and barter to acquire and develop land. Greenleaf came to the future capital with a letter of introduction from its name sake President Washington. The young speculator promised foreign investors that lots would be snapped up and houses built, he himself committed to buying 3,000 lots. Then he added to power Pennsylvania financial and political figures, Robert Morris and John Nicholson. He and his partners would eventually commit to buying over 7,000 lots for prices ranging from $66.50 to $95.10. They promised to pay over $200,000 per year for seven years. That money had it been received would have gone a long way to building the city, but none of them had the ready cash. The loans from European partners were slow in coming while the trio of Americans entered into other speculations together. At times debts to each other were simply paid with the promise of more land of dubious value. (Bordewich 156-200, Arnebeck 172-195 and 285- 330). Investors wanted clear title; clear title would not come without payment. The whole venture collapsed with Morris buying out Greenleaf. Robert Morris whose judgment and fortune could finance the Revolution but not a city built ahead of demand so he spent many of his waning days in a Philadelphia debtors’ prison. The personal fortunes and reputations were in ruins but commissioners still lacked the money to finish the capital.
Eventually Congress would first guarantee loans and then make outright appropriations to continue the work on the Capitol and President’s House. The federal government was forced to spend money it didn’t have. Land sales did little to provide cash for construction and multiple bankruptcies and defaults actually delayed private development because of the lack of confidence and cash necessary to complete the work.
THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY
One piece of property eventually owned by St. Aloysius gives some sense of the problem. Greenleaf and Morris acquired and traded back and forth, land directly opposite St. Aloysius Church which would not be fully developed until after the Civil War. Land is a great investment over time, but it does not produce the capital needed to develop itself.
The development of the city would also prove to be so dispersed that it slowed down the growth of real estate values. Unlike the cities of Boston, Philadelphia and New York which developed slowly from the nucleus of a port, gradually expanding the street system and other services, Washington began from two centers two miles apart. Even worse, the commercial center already existed in the federal district, but outside of Washington City in Georgetown. Given that the Federal government employed only a few hundred people, the permanent residents could not possibly populate the whole city at once. The areas north and west of the Executive mansion and east from the Capitol developed first. While L’Enfant had seen to it that trees were cleared along the angled Avenues many were not paved or graded until well after the nation’s centennial celebrations. The visual connections were not the most traveled paths. H Street was the preferred east west route as it avoided the ravines of Pennsylvania Ave.
The Tiber creek symbolizes the grand designs and meager product of the original plan to enhance the natural terrain. L’Enfant had envisioned redirecting Goose Creek onto Jenkins Hill (now Capitol Hill) from whence it would cascade down fountains before it flowed through the Mall into the Potomac. Instead it remained an obstacle to travel, became a sewer to drain the refuse into the Washington Canal and Potomac after being diverted into stagnant pools.
With little money t pay workers or houses to shelter them, recruiting workers to build both government and private buildings was difficult. While promoters advertized for workers in Ireland, Scotland and England promising a city of 7,000 houses, the local slavery economy drove down wages and proved a huge temptation for developers seeking lower costs. Housing was virtually non-existent and cash to pay wages often delayed by the Commissioners’ need to beg for fulfillment of pledges from the two sponsoring sates and speculators. Even William Thornton the architect of the capitol a commissioner and anti-slavery activist, eventually bought slaves for his own use and advocated purchase of slaves by the commissioners to speed the completion of the public buildings by workers who could not quit. (Bordewich 187-199).
Many investors always find it difficult to decide when further expenditures are throwing good money after bad or adding a few dollars to complete a magnificent project. This was no ordinary project and in the end, the embarrassment or quitting was a greater threat to Congress than making appropriations which it had been promised would never be needed. When the executive and legislative branches moved to Washington in 1800 it was a shabby, dispersed and depressing city. It did however have something many American towns of equal size lacked, two Catholic churches and several chapels. Holy Trinity in Georgetown and St. Patrick’s in the city itself claim the same foundation years.
(Links to contour map and UMBC computer simulation of the early city. )
CHAPTER TWO: The City and Catholicism
Geography, the national debt, slavery, the power of the federal government, along with the reputation and personality of George Washington all played roles in the development and culture of the nation’s capital but amazingly so did Catholicism. Catholics were disproportionately present both in the Potomac area and in the process of the development of the National Capital. It would have been hard to find a place in America more infested with papists than the shores of the Potomac. The brand of Catholicism arising from missionary structures and personnel would be unique. The Church grew without a resident bishop led by an order of circuit riding priest-planters. In the midst of the Revolutionary ferment that order ceased to exist and the local Church operated with little oversight for nearly two decades. This odd mix produced a local control that did not rest in the Congregation. While thoroughly American and even respected in the region, the Church and the Jesuits had reason to feel persecuted and defensive.
While numerous and in some ways privileged, Catholics even experienced persecution both at the hands of invaders from Virginia as well as by their fellow Marylanders and the government they had built. Though often called a Catholic refuge, Maryland never experienced a Catholic a majority as a colony or a state. The colony’s proprietors offered large tracts of land to settlers who paid to bring servants with them to clear and work the land. Many of these were friends and coreligionists of the Catholic Calverts. While Rhode Island and Pennsylvania offered some degree of religious liberty Maryland had been the most Catholics. Jesuits had begun an institutional presence of the Church back in 1634 on the first expedition. It was no accident that Baltimore would become the first archdiocese in the United States. Its first bishop, John Carroll, embodied the situation of Maryland Catholics. His parents owned thousands of acres worked by slaves, which allowed them to send him to Flanders where he could avoid persecution under reach of English Penal Laws and pursue his studies with Jesuits. Charles Carroll of Carrollton a singer of the Declaration of Independence and his cousin John Carroll even engaged in a doomed diplomatic effort to draw the French Canadians in the Revolution on the side of the Americans. Catholics were American but always sensitive to any encroachment on their rights.
The intermittent prohibition of public Catholic churches, the wealth of some Maryland Catholics and a dispersed population led to the practice of building house chapels served by circuit riding priests. Despite periodic persecution, Maryland Catholics had gained grudging respect and developed ways of proceeding which did not threaten the Protestant Majority. They staunchly defended property rights which had protected their livelihoods and their chapels. They like their neighbors shifted from indentured servants to slaves for their labor. Catholics and Jesuits in particular saw their duty to slaves as seeing to their religious instruction not defending their freedom. (Fogarty ).
With independence as a nation some Catholics objected to the appointment of a bishop, both for fear of protestant reaction and of the loss of autonomy (Hennessey 36-68). Without an existing hierarchy or a willing government to advise it, the Vatican allowed the priests of Maryland to elect the first bishop. In doing so they assuaged much of the anxiety by choosing one of their own from an established and respected family.
The Revolutionary alliance with Catholic France positioned a number of Catholics in offices or situations of influence, not the least of them, Pierre L’Enfant. L’Enfant had served with Washington and became his choice to design the new city. Others came hoping to capitalize on the new freedoms. James Hoban an Irish post-Revolution immigrant won his way into prominence by entering a competition for designing the President’s House. Of course the presence of Catholic diplomats also increased the demand for churches hospitable to various ethnic groups. The position of Jesuits was even more tenuous than that of their fellow Catholics as their religious order had been suppressed not by the state but by the Church.
Chapter 3 Jesuits, Privileged and Persecuted:
Parochial Life Slavery and the Suppression
By 1790 when Congress passed the Residency Act, the Society of Jesus had ceased to exist. The Society in standing up for the Church against corrupt secular states, for native communities in South America, for enculturation in Asia and for their own interests had alienated the Bourbons and other European monarchs, as well as forces within the Church. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Society, except in Russia where dynastic politics blocked the official decree. Jesuits would begin a revival in Maryland by 1805 but without the forcefulness that had led to their demise. While struggling for a sense of identity and mission, they would hold on to their experience in Maryland which had given them advantage of independence but also ugly baggage including their dependence on slave labor for their financial support.
While the Calverts had wanted to provide a home to Catholics they also sought to avoid any impression of privilege or favor which could endanger their profitable charter. The Catholic Church would have no state support or institutional endowments. The Jesuits as “Planters” would have the same rights and benefits as others who paid their own way and paid for the passage of others to work their lands. The head-right system gave planters 400 acres per immigrant on the first voyage and 300 each on several later voyages. At first, the three Jesuits emigrated along with twenty-six indentured servants. This entitled the Society to claim 11,745 acres to which another 4,505 would be added in warrants by 1637. The Jesuits’ legal status was the same as any other freemen but the resulting land would provide extraordinary resources and great distractions. Eventually they would follow the lead of others in the tidewater by resorting to slavery. ( cf. )
In order to produce revenue for the mission, Jesuits became landlords and managers. Much to the consternation of their successors they sold property for ready cash to cover immediate needs. Vatican and English mission authorities regularly raised questions about the loss of time for spiritual ministries, and eventually about the complicity with slavery. The experience also left Jesuits and the American church without either state support or a sense of lay responsibility and financial support. The domination of the local church by a religious order, which owned its own property and churches exaggerated dependence on outside support which is common among mission countries Jesuits largely avoided the Silla and Ceribdus of ownership of church assets by individual pastors or parishioner trustees, which would be a problem for other parishes in the new nation. The common life of a religious institute led them to act corporately even in a legal sense. When British laws threatened the rights of Cathoilics, Jesuits entrusted some of their assets to individual lay trustees, and reclaimed them when the threat passed. During the Suppression they held tenaciously to their corporate farms. As soon as they were able, the former Jesuits formed a Maryland corporation to own their property; the Maryland Province of the Jesuits continues to operate as one of the oldest corporations in the country. There being no bishop until 1789, the Jesuit ownership of churches did not present a challenge to the hierarchy. The Corporation of Roman Catholic Clergy presented no great problems for the first two archbishops who had been members of it. The third however was a French Sulpician not an American born former Jesuit. Carroll whose extended family had given Whitemarsh Plantation to the Society and his successor Leonard Neal both received support from that farm. Archbishop Marechal sought to gain control of that Plantation to provide support for himself and the Archdiocese. The Society trying to rebuild itself after the Suppression was not going to surrender ownership which they were sure was secure in both civil and canon law.
Jesuits owned land on which they built residences and churches and naturally developed a strong sense of proprietorship. Their nineteenth century urban parishes were built on Jesuit property and tended to have sources of support beyond the parish. Their missions usually extended beyond serving the spiritual of the local Catholics with their boundaries. St. Ignatius in Baltimore was financed with funds deposited by friends of Jesuits and other Jesuit works throughout the area. In Baltimore in 1852, the plan had been to build a large church which would attract pew renters from around the city and could help support the educational work of Loyola College. The Gesu in Philadelphia would eventually have a similar relation to the relocated St. Joseph’s College. All three projects began with large churches which incurred substantial debt. Most of the time they not would produce sufficient income to pay for themselves, much less provide a surplus for the free tuition in the colleges or their preparatory courses.
Jesuits brought contacts, organizations and resources to their parishes. Those parishes benefitted for those resources but lacked the sort of influence and control typical of parishioners whose donations of time and treasure would support other new parishes. While parishes by their nature are responsible to bishops in areas of orthodoxy and worship, parishes canonically owned by religious orders and civilly owned by their corporations operated with a degree of fiscal autonomy. Normally bishops would be very concerned about the sustainability of new especially oversized churches. At the very time that the Jesuits built the massive St. Aloysius church in an empty quadrant of the city, the archbishop stopped St. Patrick’s parish from building a new much larger Church. The bishop judged that the debt would be beyond the means of St. Patrick’s parish to repay. (MacGregor 131-143). Once he gave permission to the Society to accept land for a Church and College, he did not weigh in on the viability of the plans.
Other parishes such as St. Patrick have similarly relied on extraordinary gifts and pew rents than on collection but they also went through a series of buildings. As their numbers and resources grew so did their physical plants. Parishioners while not empowered through financial committees now required in Canon Law did influence any such plans by their willingness to contribute and their appeals to the hierarchy against their pastors.
Chapter 4 Washington by 1859: Established, Growing and Still in Peril
At first the greatest peril to the grand experiment on the Potomac seemed to be getting the federal government to leave Philadelphia and move to a nascent city. Many had thought that if Washington the man died before Washington the City was ready, it would be abandoned. It was not abandoned but it would be decades before it could slough off questions of its continued existence raised by each passing crisis. The War of 1812 proved the city’s defensive weaknesses and saw the destructive of the Capitol and executive mansion. The Capitol which the British destroyed had not even been completed yet. The President’s House had been in use for only slightly longer than it had been under construction. Fearing the decamping of Congress, local investors built a temporary Capitol building on the current site of the Supreme Court. While there was no shortage of critics and opportunists ready to move the Capital elsewhere, the restoration of the federal buildings became a sign of strength and defiance.
While others would criticize the city once reconstruction began, the future of the Nation’s Capital was never really endangered again until the escalation of sectional conflict over slavery in the 1850s. Slavery and the resistance of slaves to their status sent several waves of fear through the city in the inter-war years. Gabriel’s Rebellion in Virginia caused panic among slave-owners through Virginia into the District. Secession had been a repeated threat by those who felt disenfranchised: the Federalist opponents of the war in 1814, the South Carolina nullifiers in 1832 and again slave states prior to the compromise of 1850. Any significant split would endanger the Capital by shifting it from the center to the edge of whatever faction of which it remained part. The very day of the dedication of St. Aloysius Church brought the dual fears of secession and slave rebellion into Washington as never before.
The City at Mid-century
While George Washington and others who favored a site on the Potomac dreamed of the new city as a commercial gateway to the “west” the Capital would remain a government center more than anything else which waxed and waned with the federal government. While George Washington stood to profit from land he owned in the city and its vicinity, he also risked a great deal of money in a canal venture intended to create a water link to the Ohio Valley. That Potomack Canal was short lived and its successor the C&O canal quickly lost out to the Erie Canal and then the advent of rail transportation. Washington would never rival Baltimore, Philadelphia or New York as a port. ( c.f. Fergus Bordewich Washington the Making of The American Capital pp 61-63).
As a government center, Washington had still not filled up after fifty years. While there were indeed fortunes to be made in real estate and service industries, progress was slow. Many nineteenth century writers attest to how young and incomplete Washington was as a city. They testify to planned streets and buildings that were nothing but rolling fields, ungraded and unpaved. Following his 1842 trip to the United States Charles Dickens described Washington as a city lacking in people and buildings in his American Notes.
It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from the top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile-long, that only want houses, roads and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a public to be complete; and ornaments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament - are its leading features. One might fancy the season over, and most of the houses gone out of town for ever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Barmecide Feast: a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in; a monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscription to record its departed greatness. (Dickens American Notes, Chapter VIII 140).
That was actually one of his kinder comments for he continued:
Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen for the seat of Government, as a means of averting the conflicting jealousies and interests of the different States; and very probably, too, as being remote from mobs: a consideration not to be slighted, even in America. It has no trade or commerce of its own: having little or no population beyond the President and his establishment; the members of the legislature who reside there during the session; the Government clerks and officers employed in the various departments; the keepers of the hotels and boarding-houses; and the tradesmen who supply their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people would live in Washington, I take it, who were not obliged to reside there; and the tides of emigration and speculation, those rapid and regardless currents, are little likely to flow at any time towards such dull and sluggish water. (Dickens American Notes, Chapter VIII 140-141).
Even with the impending sectional crisis, Washington became more monumental and more recognizable to modern eyes. Besides the long existent White House, Capitol, and Treasury Department were other buildings which still stand today though their purposes have changed. Patent Office ( Now the National Portrait Gallery) and Post Office (now the Hotel Monaco- Washington) asserted the grandeur and power which was not yet evident in ordinary life. In the summer of 1851 construction began on the new wings of the Capitol which contain the present House and Senate chambers. The low copper covered wooden dome would also be replaced by the massive cast iron dome of today. City Hall at Judiciary Square which also housed the federal courts was finally completed. The often reviled, but always interesting Smithsonian “castle” was in place though its mission was still evolving. There were even Theaters including Ford’s which had first been built as a church.
Transported back to the 1850s we could find our way by familiar landmarks, but much of the rest would be quite foreign. A post Civil War English visitor wrote:
To make a Washington Street, take one marble temple or public office a dozen good houses of brick and a dozen of wood, and fill in with sheds and fields. (Latham 1867 in Green 238)
There was permanence but incompleteness.
The mere existence of a Census of Agriculture for the District of Columbia may help with the mental picture of Washington. That Census for 1860 recorded 34,263 acres of farms with only 17,474 acres “improved” with buildings or fences. At its largest prior to retrocession of Alexandria to Virginia in 1846, the entire District had been 100 square miles or only 64,000 acres including the Potomac River. Over half of the District was farm land and only half of that was considered improved. The City produced more bushels of Indian corn that it had residents. (http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/Historical_Publications/1860/1860b-07.pdf p 171).
The city had after all not really been created ex nihilo (out of nothing). Any farm land accessible to navigable tidal waters had been especially valuable prior to the spread of inexpensive railroad transport. Whatever crops one grew could be shipped out directly to foreign or domestic markets. All the land along the Potomac had long been claimed and much of it cultivated. The lands acquired by the Commissioners in 1791 were all within the City of Washington which extended only as far north as Boundary Ave., now Florida Ave. What streets there were, stopped at that point with the exception of inter-city roads like Bladensburg Pike. It isn’t that people started farms in the city, the city absorbed the farms. Some farms were acquired to build the city; others were sold to speculators while many continued to be worked until the land would actually become too valuable to farm.
Besides the rural appearance a modern observer would be shocked at the rolling terrain. (Insert link to map of grading 1882) Today buildings block our view after a few hundred feet so we can seldom see the gradual changes in elevation common to the Atlantic coastal plane. Today except from summits such as Fort DuPont Park, the National Shrine and the Rhode Island Aveenue Home Depot parking lot one might think the City was flat. It is of course part of the broad coastal plain, but on the very edge of the fall line which runs through and north of the city from Great Falls on the Potomac northeast through the District separating the tidal areas from the Piedmont. http://www.virginiaplaces.org/regions/fallshape.html
The People
While one might struggle to envision the District of Columbia as a city of 50,000 as it was in 1850 that does not mean that visions of its potential for growth were entirely absurd. The District while thinly populated was indeed very young. The President did not move to the city until June of 1800. The city population doubled every twenty years, but it began from meager seeds outside of the ports of George Town and Alexandria. The Census of 1800 counts of 14,093 persons but 2,993 were in Georgetown and 4,971 in Alexandria. The City of Washington itself was home to only 3,210. The total population more than doubled to 33,039 in 1820. Then the initial burst slowed reaching 51,687 by 1850. One year after the founding of St. Aloysius parish the Census showed total population of 75,080 but the bulk 61,122 were in Washington itself. That made the Washington the fourteenth largest city in a nation that was still 80% rural. It was more than a village but not a monumental or cosmopolitan city. http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/table-4.pdf and (Green 21).
Carved out of two major slave-holding states the District had a black population of 28% by 1860. In the beginning, nearly one out of five African Americans or 783 out of the 4,027 were free. Africans who were born free or emancipated generally found cities safer than the plantation dominated countryside. Historians of urban slavery note that cities incongruously mixed the social interaction of cities with the rigid system of control necessary to hold people against their will. Over time slave owners and local governments became concerned about the influence of free blacks on the slave population. In Washington there was also embarrassment at the commentary of foreign visitors who remarked on the irony of seeing slaves in the capital of this new nation of freedom.
Dickens had it seemed been in town for the censure of John Quincy Adams for his breach of the Gag Rule which had blocked debate on slavery in Congress. He noted:
It was but a week since an aged and grey-haired man, a lasting honour to the land that gave him birth, who has done good service to his country, a his forefathers did...stood for days upon his trial before this very body, charged with having dared to assert the infamy of that traffic which has for its accused merchandise men, women and their unborn children. (American Notes p 143)
In 1820, the peak of slave holding in the District, the number of slaves reaching 40% of the total population. After that the number of slaves diminished and the number of freedmen grew. By 1850, the year of the Compromise which ended the slave trade but not slavery in the District, slaves were a minority of the city’s black population. On the eve of the Civil War there were 3,185 slaves less than 5% of the total population. The free black population of 11,131 was about 15% percent of the total. Though it’s numbers varied, slavery was a significant cultural and moral force throughout the ante-bellum period.
Chapter 5 No College without a Church Washington Seminary and the Disappointment of St. Patrick’s
An Accident of Time and Place
The Distance of Georgetown from Downtown, the on again off again history of The Washington Seminary, tensions with diocesan clergy and the Jesuit desire to reclaim their rightful place in the local church have more to do with the birth of St. Aloysius Parish than the pressing needs of the faithful in Swampoddle.
John Carroll certainly intended to influence the new Republic when he founded his Academy on the Potomac ( Georgetown College). He was not however farsighted enough to know that the heights of George Town would someday be annexed into the Nation’s Capital. Georgetown claims the same founding year as the Constitution 1789 and had in fact acquired the property even earlier. While it attracted visitors of note it was considered too distant from the seat of government to allow as easy commute on unpaved streets over ravines and through standing water. Dickens’ observation supports both its importance and its perceived distance:
At George Town in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit College, delightfully situated and so far as I had the opportunity of seeing, well managed. Many persons, who are not members of the Romish Church, avail themselves of these institutions, and the advantagenous opportunities they afford for the education of their children... The air at that elevation was quite cool and refreshing when the in the city it was burning hot. (Dickens 148)
Which ever came first Holy Trinity Parish or St. Patrick’s they were intended to serve very different locales. (www.holytrinitydc.org/AboutParish/History/index.htm and www.saintpatrickdc.org/ourhistory.shtml )
Jesuits seemed to have friends a plenty, but friends who prevented them from gaining a parish in Washington City for half a century. John Carroll from the start entrusted Georgetown College to his fellow former Jesuits. Yet once the Society was restored locally in 1805 and universally in 1814, Carroll was glad for their college work but was equally hesitant to significantly expand their role in the City of Washington. Just two weeks after he gave permission to move their novitiate to F St. next to St Patrick’s he dispelled all hope that this might lead to Jesuit control of the parish. (Carroll to Grassi March 31, 1815).
The high point for Jesuit efforts to reclaim jurisdiction over the area actually came quickly after their rejection by Carroll. His successor Leonard Neale also a former Jesuit granted all they could wish in 1816. While largely restoring former Jesuit mission and parishes founded before the Suppression the agreement reached by Archbishop Neale and Fr. Grassi the President of Georgetown and superior of the missions in North America stated that:
... St. Inigoes, (sic), Newtown, St. Thomas’s with their dependencies, white Marsh, Hartford, Bohemia and St. Joseph in the eastern shore also Fredericktown with their dependencies are now restored as formerly were, and put again permanently under the spiritual care of the Religious of the Soct. Of J. Likewise the Missions and Congr. Of Georgetown, and Alexandria in the District of Columbia. Patrick’s Church in Washington with Queen’s Chapel and Rockcreek Congr. Are assigned and given to be permanently in the spiritual care of the Religious of the Soct. Of J. according to their Institute.
Jesuits were not prepared to fully comply with this extraordinary agreement prior to the death of Archbishop Neale. Nevertheless the agreement anticipated this in great detail, allowing the Jesuits jurisdiction and direction even if they could not provide the clerical manpower needed:
In case that it should not be in the power of the Superior of the Soct of J. In this country to send any of his religious, and he could procure other Priests duly qualified it will be lawful for him to send them on the said Missions with the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop. Should it happen that no Priest could be found to supply the said Missions the Superior of the Relig of the Soct of Jesus will give notice to the Most Rev. Archbp and adopt with his concurrence the most proper measures to provide for the exigency of the Missions. (WSL XIX vol 1. 1890 12-13 cited in duFief 14-15)
Archbishop Neale essentially restored the Society to their status before the Suppression and the establishment of an American Episcopacy. Given the extraordinary demand for Jesuits and the restriction it placed on the freedom of future archbishops, it is not at all difficult to understand that its provisions were never fulfilled. Neale out lived Carroll by less than three years. What is noteworthy is how insistent Jesuits were on reclaiming what had been lost in 1773. That drive would be met with the establishment of a new parish but one seemingly away from the center of ecclesial and political action.
While Jesuit superiors clearly wanted to have a pastoral presence in the city, they backed into founding a new college. The existing parish was under the pastorage of a Jesuit friend and graduate of Jesuit schools. Fr. William Matthews had even briefly entered the Jesuit novitiate. Matthews was vital to the development of Jesuit works having served as President of Georgetown and provided land for what would become Gonzaga College. He would also have a role in pushing Jesuits to the edge of settlement in the city.
Fr. Matthews hoping for assistance with his parish sold the Society a lot for the establishment of a Novitiate at the token sum of $1.00. He himself had personally acquired the lot for $500 from James Hoban, architect of the White House. The Society then acquired three other lots in the same block. With hope dashed for gaining the parish and finding the noise and “urban” inappropriate, the Jesuit Novitiate soon moved to Fredrick. The Society retained ownership and let the building out to a privately run school. For a brief period in 1820, Jesuit scholastics returned to the building for studies in philosophy and theology . The following year the college took in tuition paying lay students but remained known as the Washington Seminary. This precursor of Gonzaga ran afoul of the Society’s rule against charging tuition. Fr. Matthews again came to their rescue by running the school and collecting the tuition himself while providing Jesuits with financial support for their service of teaching there. (MacGregor 68-71)
When the Superior General ordered an end to this charade in 1827, Matthews and his assistants kept a school going on the site. Losing any hope of continuing the college, the Jesuits sold the property back to Matthews. Later when the Jesuit gained permission to charge tuition ( MPA box 69 folder 19), Matthews sold them back the property- for 5% of what he had paid the original Jesuit purchaser’s relatives to quit-claim the property. It seems that as late as 1848, the long tenured pastor of St. Patrick’s and the Jesuits still cooperated despite Jesuit designs on his parish. (MacGregor 71-73). Jesuits on the other hand having been rejected by Carroll repeatedly sought a church in Washington. As much as he appreciated the Jesuit educational effort Matthews was unwilling to allow them to force him out of his parish or overshadow his efforts by establishing a nearby parish. In 1847, he urged the archbishop to give the Jesuits a parish on the East side of the Tiber. (AAB March 1 and 6 cited in MacGregor 74).
The appointment of another diocesan priest as pastor of St. Patrick’s after Fr. Matthews death seems to have sparked a flurry of Jesuit activity to found a new downtown parish. Fr. Matthews had outlasted the attempts of the Jesuits to gain St. Patrick’s serving as pastor from 1804 until his death in 1854. At the same time he had pointed out a direction for a new Jesuit parish.
Jesuits had long built colleges and Churches as part of a combined pastoral and educational ministry. Fr. Villager who would be the first pastor of St. Aloysius would say a few years later, “ But a college without a church we could not open anywhere. It need not be a parish church... Our colleges must always have a church attached to them” (Francis X Talbot, S.J. Jesuit Education in Philadelphia p 78). The primacy of the college ministry does seem apparent in the need for a college to have a church rather than the other way around. A large parish could also be a source of financial support for the educational works. There could also be shared facilities which provided the school with worship space and the parish with assembly and meeting space.
The Restoration of the Society, in a growing nation whose parishes fell directly under bishops seems to have prompted a shift in the Maryland Jesuits view of parishes. During the colonial and early federal period, Jesuits provided much of the pastoral care in this missionary region. The Maryland Province owned many stand alone parishes and provided assistance and leadership to others. Parishes could introduce many people, even those without school aged children to Jesuit spirituality. The Society did not rush to dispose of parishes, but it viewed new parishes in terms of their synergy with other works especially education.
The site of the old Washington Seminary next to the oldest and most substantial parish in Washington had been a fixed idea for the Jesuits of Washington since the agreement with Neale. A Jesuit run college and parish at St. Patrick’s became less tenable over time. The existing church was inadequate for the growing Catholic population and would need to be replaced, making the available space on the block even tighter in a part of the city that was well developed. If there were to be College and parish together in Washington, it would have to be somewhere else.
Chapter 6 Let Us Have a Church Downtown
In the year following the death of Fr. Matthews Jesuits sought and gained permission from Archbishop Kenrick to found a new Church with a College. The Province had received the offer of land on a somewhat distant site. Even though the Archbishop gave permission to accept a gift of land, Jesuits at “The Washington Seminary,” would resist the move to so distant a place.
One might count the foundation of St. Aloysius from the Feast of St. Ignatius in 1855. On that date Archbishop Kenrick gave permission to accept the gift on Birch’s Hill clearly putting the College first:
Vasintonopoli, fundi in quo erigatur collegium cum ecclesia...(MPA July 31, 1855 F. P Kenrick to C. Stonestreet Box 75, folder 6).
Those opposed to moving to the outskirts of city sought for another site, before superiors could act on the initial offer. The availability of a financially distressed Congregational Church in 1856, produced a spate of letters from Jesuit officials at the Washington Seminary to Rev. Charles Stonestreet the Jesuit Provincial. The letters of the Rector and vice-Rector cited the needs of the local church, the benefit to Jesuit efforts and the unlikelihood of decisive action by Archbishop Kenrick as favoring the a new push for a church.
The vice-Rector emphasized the timing and the needs of the Church in Washington:
After much reflection I feel it my duty to write your Reverence in regard to the projected church in Washington. I remain still firmly convinced of the necessity of more church room in the city and at the present state of things here is a concurrence most favorable to any well conducted enterprise to such an end. (MPA May 14, 1856 Box 75 folder 26)
The Rector Fr. DeNeckere followed a few days later pushing the current needs and the necessity of prompt action, saying, “But really my very dear Father, the opportunity of getting the church should not escape us. “ (MPA May 17, 1856, DeNeckere to Stonestreet box 72 folder 26).
The availability of a ready made church with additional land on offer was attractive and the archdiocese did not seem interested in it themselves.
Rev Fr. Rector has just aid to me that Mr. Simms expcts to hear from N. York today from the holders of the church and is sanguine of a favorable reply. He thinks there will be but little difficulty in procuring ground on 6th St in the rear of the church if care be taken and no anxiety manifested ( MPA May 14, 1856, Hoban to Stonestreet box 75 folder 26)
Rumors about the impending creation of a new diocese for Washington seemed to distract the clergy in 1856. The Jesuits at the Washington Seminary hinted ominously of a new bishop.
The secular clergy, looking to the appointment of a Bishop, I incline to think will not attempt anything before the determination of that point and when that is concluded to be done, some time must elapse before effective measures can be taken on this part. Thus much as to the want of a church. ( MPA May 14, 1856 Hoban to Stonestreet, box 75 folder 26)
Washington Catholics long believing that the nation’s capital needed a Catholic Cathedral speculated that John McGill, bishop of Richmond would come
north as the first bishop of the See. McGill himself put those rumors to rest in August of 1856. In a letter about conferring orders on Jesuits, he dispelled a notion that there would be a chance for closer working relations with Jesuits in Washington:
I am told that no see is at present to be established in Washington and that I am to remain in Richmond, with which arrangement I am perfectly content, knowing that Providence disposes of all things for the best.( MPA Au 3rd, 1856 McGill to , box folder)
The Jesuits were right that Archdiocese would take no action but circumstances would change their plans as well.
The lack of interest by the archdiocese seemed confirmed when Rev. Donelan declined to take up an offer from the creditors:
We saw Rd. H. Clarke this morning, he had made a formal offer from the persons holding the mortgage, to Rev. Mr. Donelan who formally declines to treat further about the purchase. They are hunting bidders, Mr C. had felt bound to do so as the attorney of Mr.Donelan. He was applied to by the party holding the mortgage and as Mr. Donelan til this declension had not formally yielded all claim to the purchase. It is well that the offer was made. Mr. Clarke says the property must inevitably fall into our hands if we wish it. The attorney of the creditors says that it must be sold.(MPA May 23, 1856 Hoban to Stonestreet, box 75 folder 26).
The Maryland Province had been expanding its works rather substantially in the face of immigration elsewhere. Fordham and The College of the Holy Cross had begun in the 1840 while St. Joseph’s College and Loyola College had been added by 1852. Jesuits also staffed parishes in rural and urban areas from Virginia to Maine. Fr. General had expressed concern over the expansion of province works, but the Jesuits in Washington saw little difficulty is acquiring and operation a parish along with the college. The administrative ability of Fr. Hoban, the assistance and generosity of laymen and Providence all contributed to their confidence:
I have spoken to Fr. Hoban and he is not uneasy about the finances. I promise you to take all reasonable care about my health, which is better and will soon be good enough, besides may we not express that Almty God for whose glory we are trying to work will do so the thing. I have thought of some trusty honest men who could help us without our busying ourselves too much in the matter. (MPA May 17, 1856, DeNeckere to Stonestreet box 72 folder 26).
While both local administrators expressed great confidence in gaining support for the work, both indicated that such support had been lacking in the past.
While the Jesuit History along the Potomac was extensive current educational efforts seemed to suffer from their pastoral absence, during the Suppression and their exclusion from Washington parishes and the wealth of land. They believed that having a church would correct their meager influence in Washington
It is true that since we are in Washington we have not had much encouragement but we have not had much chance for it, if once in possession of a church our social condition changes all together to our advantage and I can pledge my word and Fr. Hoban is the same opinion the people of Washington will not prove stingy or ungenerous.(MPA May 17, 1856, DeNeckere to Stonestreet box 72 folder 26).
Hoban had previously expressed a similarly nuanced sentiment:
Here we won’t have many warm friends and some would I fear be indifferent if not cool to the enterprise. You know who these are, the secular priests not one of whom visits us cordially and only one at all... I believe that much good can be affected by the Society in Washington, that there is here a wide and inviting field which we must ultimately posses, that the people will sustain us. ( MPA May 14, 1856 Hoban to Stonestreet, box 75 folder 26)
They saw potential and were convince that they would eventually be well received and do good work but saw a real hesitancy in the local population originating with the diocesan clergy.
The other major obstacle to fund raising was convincing potential donors that the Society really was poor. This would be a difficult task. The Province still owned about 20,000 acres of farms in Maryland. They were seldom very profitable and used up Jesuit administrative talent and moral capital especially during the past slave owning period.
The people rich and poor need church room and they want the Jesuits. I believe the apparent want of liberality among our Catholics here and elsewhere to the Society may have sprung from our disinclination to admit the vulgar impeachment of being poor. ( MPA May 23, 1856 Hoban to Stonestreet, box 75 folder 26)
That is to say that, we have to admit we cannot do this on our own, we need help. The thousands of acres of land meant the Maryland Province was not without resources, but the value and especially the income from those resources did not grow as quickly as the need for more funds.
Chapter 7 A Gift in Search of a Beneficiary
Despite the permission of the archbishop to found a new parish and even to accept a specific property the project did not go forward immediately. This desire of Jesuits for a new church was no doubt known to Ambrose Lynch, whose Daniel was a Jesuit in the F St. Community teaching in the “Seminary.” Mr. Lynch’s was a builder who like many before him had bought land in Washington hoping to develop it at an opportune time. He also desired to found local Catholic charities but without having made a fortune with his land, he eventually decided that the land itself could be his legacy. It was that land, his age and lack of other alternative that led to the establishment of St. Aloysius Church on the less than prosperous Birch’s Hill. While Lynch had clearly made an offer of some land prior to the Archbishop’s letter in 1855, he at first intended that the bulk of his real estate holdings assist the orphan boys of Washington. His frustrations with other charities would lead him make and then expand his gift to the Jesuits.
While his gift eventually extended to two blocks along North Capitol the value of his gift depended as Washington real estate did so often on the inevitable but uncertain increase in land values. Even before Lynch bought the land its present value failed to meet the expectations of its buyers. The aging Irish born bricklayer bought Square 622 on which Gonzaga and the Church would stand for $2,000. Benjamin Oden the owner at the time of the Residency Act sold the block to Benjamin Orr for $1250. Eventually Mr. Orr then signed a deed of trust or mortgage with the Bank for $6420.35. Mr. Orr having failed to repay the loan suffered foreclosure. The previous foreclosure indicated that Mr. Lynch was purchasing the lots well before there was any reasonable expectation of development.
Having not developed it, Ambrose Lynch decided to use his appreciated assents to make a difference for his Church and the poor for years to come. His restrictions frustrated his plans through a succession of wills, sales and exchanges. On the Feast of the Assumption in 1854, Lynch signed a will giving the blocks bounded by North Capital, I St. First St and L St. to the Trustees of St. Vincent’s Orphanage. The first restriction was gender:
And I hereby expressly declare that I desire the said Squares and the proceeds thereof shall be held and applied and appropriated for the male branch of said Asylum and that no part of the same shall be held applied or appropriated for a Female branch of said Asylum. ( GA Lynch will Aug 15, 1854).
St. Vincent’s already had a girl’s orphan “asylum” but the city lacked an adequate male facility. Fr. Matthews had died on April 30th giving $3,000 from his own estate far a male orphanage. Lynch clearly intended to assist that work. Otherwise the use the property would be left to the Trustees as long as it benefit the Orphanage.
To have and to hold the said Squares of ground unto and in trust, for, for the use, benefit and behoof of said Saint Vincent’s Orphan Asylum and to sell, dispose and convey the same all or any part thereof as may be deemed advantageous and proper. ( GA Lynch will Aug 15, 1854).
It would not prove to be so simple.
The new pastor of St. Patrick’s chose to incorporate a new St. Joseph’s Male Orphan Asylum. Beside money and land, they needed religious order of men to run it. None were forthcoming. Archbishop Kenrick eventually agreed to allow the Holy Cross Sisters to run St. Joseph’s and a site was rented at 13th and H Streets NW. Following its opening Lynch revised his will to include the new entity and more precisely direct it’s use of the land both requiring the orphanage to locate on his site and limiting the disposition of land. He wished to guarantee their future by making the Trustees permanent landlords, giving to the.
“the Trustees and of St. Joseph’s Male Orphan Asylum” and their successors and assigns forever all the said lots in square numbered Six-hundred and Twenty-one and all the said three fourths of Square number six-hundred twenty-two and all of Square numbered Six hundred twenty-three as aforesaid, all the said parts of Squares and square of ground to be for the sole use and benefit of said Orphan Asylum, and I hereby direct that so much thereof as may not be used or occupied for the buildings and appurtenances of said Asylum shall be leased out for long terms renewable forever at good annual rents, the income wherefore shall be for the use and benefit of the said Asylum and the support thereof. ( GA Ambrose Lynch will Aug 16, 1856)
Perhaps in two years he had learned that gifts did not always produce the intended results and he determined to further restrict future decisions of the Trustees. The slowness of the project seems to have diminished his trust in St. Joseph’s and also to have diminished the gift.
In his 1856 will, Lynch would add the Jesuits to his will while more precisely defining what the orphanage must do with his bequest. one quarter block from the orphan asylum to the Jesuits.
Of the Worldly estate which it has pleased a kind Providence to entrust me with, I desire to make the following disposition, Viz. Item- I give devise and bequeath unto “The President and Directors of George Town College” in the District of Columbia all the Eastern one fourth of Square numbered Six-hundred and twenty-Two (622) in the said City of Washington. ( GA Ambrose Lynch will Aug 16, 1856)
Increasingly frustrated with delays in the orphanage Lynch was clearly developing a plan to guarantee that his gift of land would have a lasting impact and not be sold for immediate gain. The bequest to St. Joseph’s was rather large well beyond the real estate needs of a nineteenth century institution. The extent of the land was surely going to make it a source of income and not merely an institutional location. It was to be a form of tangible income producing endowment. Because of his experience with trying to perpetuate his long-term vision of charity to people with more immediate needs, Lynch clearly found a need to bind his beneficiaries to legal commitments.
Item I give devise and bequeath unto “The Trustees of the St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum” in the District of Columbia as incorporated by an Act of Congress all the remaining three-fourths of the Square numbered Six-hundred and Twenty-two in the said City after the devise hereinbefore made, and also all of Square numbered Six-hundred and Twenty three (623) in the said City and also the Lots owned and held by me in the Square numbered Six-hundred twenty-one (621) in the said City to have and to hold unto the said “the Trustees and of St. Joseph’s Male Orphan Asylum” and their successors and assigns forever all the said lots in square numbered Six-hundred and Twenty-one and all the said three fourths of Square number six-hundred twenty-two and all of Square numbered Six hundred twenty-three as aforesaid, all the said parts of Squares and square of ground to be for the sole use and benefit of said Orphan Asylum, and I hereby direct that so much thereof as may not be used or occupied for the buildings and appurtenances of said Asylum shall be leased out for long terms renewable forever at good annual rents, the income wherefore shall be for the use and benefit of the said Asylum and the support thereof.
His relationship with the Jesuits was more personal and his contemplated gift was smaller and totally unencumbered. Over time it would be changed again.
Within a year, Lynch older and less patient wanted to see to the beginnings of his two favorite charities, but he would hold back the bulk of his estate. He remained convinced of the long-term value of holding Washington D.C. real estate but decided to limit his initial transfer to one quarter block each for the Jesuits and for St. Joseph’s. Ambrose Lynch convey to:
the said President and Directors of Georgetown College and their successors forever, all that certain piece or parcel of land...that is to say all the eastern quarter part of square numbered six hundred and twenty two (622) on the ground plan or plat of said City; ...for their own proper use and ... forever that is to say nevertheless for educational and charitable purposes to wit to erect on the said piece or parcel of land and premises a College and church, the college to be covered in within four years from the date of these presents and the church to be covered in within two years from the same date. (GA Lynch deed May 4, 1857 recorded with recorder of Deeds in Liber JAS No 133 folios200 and 201).
The restrictions on the Asylum were similarly perpetual and required construction in order to complete the transfer. The Asylum gift had shrunken considerably. It received the second quarter “which immediately adjoins the eastern quarter of said square conveyed to Georgetown College.” The hope was for the Jesuits to assist the sisters with the spiritual care of the orphans as such the “said Asylum must be commenced with the college to be erected of the eastern adjoining quarter square and must be covered within four years from this date. “ (GA Ambrose Lynch deed May 4, 1857 recorded with the Recorder of Deeds J.A.S. 133 folio 202-204). These simple grants prompted the creation of a new Jesuit corporation to own the property, The President and Director of Gonzaga College” and set off a series of events that would pit Lynch and his daughter Mary against the original object of his charity. His endowment plan had temporarily disappeared it would however return and complicate the finaces of the Jesuit works and the orphange.
The New Gonzaga Corporation and Its Obligations
The Jesuits finally had what they wanted, permission to start a parish, a benefactor and property, but little would proceed as they wanted. The center of Jesuit ministry in the city of Washington would be in a location they had long resisted. They would be tied to another charitable work which would never taken up its place on I St and they would incur a substantial financial obligation well beyond the price for which Ambrose Lynch might have been able to sell his land, or the Jesuits have been able to buy land. The initial gifts seems at first to be uncomplicated. While the Maryland Jesuits had incorporated in the previous century, it was the practice to incorporate separate entities in each state for the major institutions. This was no doubt driven by both a desire to protect the colonial patrimony of the Province and remain in accord with rather primitive incorporation laws. Most states and the district lacked general incorporation laws, by which incorporators simply file articles of incorporation with an administrative office. The creation of perpetual legal persons, isolating the members from lawsuits directed at the corporation was considered so powerful a privilege and potentially dangerous that they could only be created by an act of the competent legislative body. The only Jesuit corporation in the District of Columbia was the “President and Directors of Georgetown College.” Incorporated in the state of Maryland prior to the cession of Georgetown city to the Federal government, it continued in existence in the District. The purpose and capital assets of such corporations was severely limited to limit their power.
No other Jesuit entity existing in the District, Ambrose Lynch decided to give land to Georgetown in trust until such time as a new corporation might be created. The would no longer have to await his death to receive the land, so on May 4 1857 he granted to:
President and Directors of Georgetown College and their successors forever, all that certain piece or parcel of land lying and being in the City of Washington in the District of Columbia as follows, that is to say all the eastern quarter part of square numbered six hundred and twenty two (622) on the ground plan or plat of said City...
That area is essentially the piece of land holding the Church, the Jesuit Residence and the school buildings on North Capitol and K streets. The purpose was two fold and as it turned out a rather substantial order for so small a property.
...to and for their own proper use and ... forever that is to say nevertheless for educational and charitable purposes to wit to erect on the said piece or parcel of land and premises a College and church,
Besides requiring that the land be used for both a high school (College is understood more in the sense of preparing students for University) the gift included a strict time-line.
The college to be covered in within four years from the date of these presents and the church to be covered in within two years from the same date.
The church would in fact be covered, though not yet opened by the second anniversary of this deed but no other buildings would be built by the Society on that original land until the 1903 grade school. The cost of the church built without an existing congregation would strain Jesuit fund raising ability, sectional tension threw the city into uncertainty and Mr. Lynch’s gift of an adjacent property all conspired to delay further construction.
The mandate to build a college on the land clearly indicated that the Washington Seminary back under Jesuit auspices since 1848 and the apostolic work of Ambrose’s son the Reverend Daniel Lynch S.J. should be moved to North Capitol Street. Such a move would require another new expensive building in square 622 and the probable sale of the existing building either to St. Patrick’s Church or an orphan asylum. Even when the move came in 1871 there were plenty of critics who thought that it was suicide for the college to move to the outskirts of the city. The foot-dragging must have been no less in 1857. Lynch would eventually lift the time restriction on the building of the College and allow a complicated property transfer with the St. Joseph’s Orphanage. At the same time as his gift to the Society, Mr. Lynch also made an immediate gift of the second quarter of square 622 to the St. Joseph’s Orphanage. While the trustees of the orphanage were anxious to receive the gift, they were for various reasons including distance from the city not anxious to relocate the existing orphanage or incur the cost of an entirely new one. The Jesuits quickly concluded that even by nineteenth century college standards a quarter of a block would prove insufficient in the long run. They then returned to their benefactor seeking to acquire additional property.
Being an old man with limited hard money and great philanthropic visions Ambrose Lynch agreed to a most unusual sale/gift/loan to the Jesuits. He would sell the remaining half of square 622, all of 623 to the south, and five lots on the block to the north bounded by K and L Streets and by North Capitol and First NW. Since the Jesuits wanted to make use of the nearest part of the block on which the Church was being built, Lynch removed the only restriction on the Orphanage’s deed, allowing St. Vincent’s to swap that second quarter for the third quarter of the block. Since the Society was acquiring the entire western half of the block, the fact that they did not trade the western most quarter suggests that they if fact only had expectations of using half the block, which is all that they had originally sought to purchase. The western quarter would be among the first sections to be sold.
The full nature of the sale was more unusual and more like a restricted gift. Lynch would accept partial payment forgiving the bulk of the money the Society owed for the land. The total square footage transferred was according to the deed
All the said tracts parcels and lots of land hereby conveyed, containing three hundred and fifty-six thousand and fifty-six thousand eight hundred and eighty two square feet...
At $.015 per foot the value came to 57,612.73 which according to the September 23, 1858 deed was to be paid in:
money of the United States in hand paid to the said party of the first part of this indenture by the said parties of the second part hereof and before the execution and delivery of this indenture, the receipt of whereof is hereby acknowledged, Sep 23, 1858 (GCA)
While that all seems straight forward, the deed executed on September 23, 1858 was not presented for recording until October 9. Further a second document dated Oct 30 1858 was witnessed but not recorded in the Recorder of Deeds office.
The second Agreement between Ambrose Lynch and the President and directors of the College indicated that only seven thousand six hundred and thirteen dollars would be paid to the seller. The remainder essentially $50,000 would never need to be paid. It in effect became a permanent loan at six percent interest. That interest would not be paid to Lynch and his heirs but to charities which would assist the poor.
1st I wish two thousand dollars to be annually expended to provide books and clothing for destitute Catholic children of both sexes so as to enable them to attend their parochial or other Catholic schools and also for other charities. The first expenditures to be made on the first of April 1861.
2nd I assign one thousand dollars annually to Gonzaga College of Washington City, the corporation of which I constitute as my Almoner for faithful superintendence in the dispersing these charities and for keeping a regular account open for such charitable institutions as may receive their alms.
Instead of taking the money which Gonzaga would pay to buy the land and use it as a gift to his favored charities he perpetually bound the Jesuits to give money away in his name. It is clear that Gonzaga did not have that kind of money. If they had they probably would have used it to pay most of the $60,000 that the church would cost not buy land they had no intention of using.
Mr. Lynch’s charitable intentions had been constrained by the lack of demand for such a large property at that point in time, the country just having experienced yet another panic and recession. His land would certainly be worth more in the future but at his age he had already exceed the average life span and would in fact be dead in a few years. He just needed someone to give him that future worth now. The Jesuits probably expected land to increase in value as it surely did, but hoped that it would occur at a rate that would allow them to meet their obligations both to Lynch and those who advanced money for the construction of the Church. Once again hoping to pay for construction with land for which there was only limited demand would prove to be a difficult bargain to keep.
After Mr. Lynch’s death St. Joseph’s Orphanage which had built but never occupied what is now part of Kohlmann Hall asked the College to do something which would cause great conflict with the Lynch family. When the Orphanage and the college traded the second and third quarters of the block, Mr. Lynch had asked the Jesuits to restrict the property they transferred to the Orphanage as the original gift from him had been. During the Civil War the Orphanage building was occupied by Mercy sisters to tended to the wounded at nearby hospitals. Later it was sold to Mercy Sisters who attempted to run a school there for several years. The change was illegal but apparently not challenged by surviving daughter of Lynch.
Several other provisions of the original agreement fell quickly. Having built a “capacious church” as Lynch described it there was just no money to build a college building and the one on F St. seemed to be doing relatively well. The College would not be built by 1861 and with the onset of war all construction was in doubt. Lynch delayed both that requirement and the date for the beginning of the interest payments because of the national crisis. In do so he signed quitclaim deeds to remove any doubt about the legitimacy of the College’s title to the land. The dream was coming apart and the College was being forced to sell land quickly to cover its costs.
The only substantial homes in the area when St. Aloysius was built were three home homes at 2nd and I NW called Minnesota Row. Senators Douglas, Breckenridge and Rice built large homes in an area not known as a prestigious address. Clearly they hoped to acquire more home than they might have in another section. They clearly hoped at some point to profit from appreciation and possibly speculation on other lots. At first it would seem that an elegant church would help their cause, but Mrs. Stephan A. Douglas complained that they were driving down value by their early sales.
It would seem that while later Presidents may have wondered why in the world the “College” had sold off land which would later be desperately needed, or which would have gained a higher price in a few years, it appears that the intention had always been to sell land in order to cover current expenses, hoping that an increase in revenue would allow them in the future to make good on their commitment to serve as Almoner for Ambrose Lynch.
The Church of St. Aloysius was the first building to be built on the land given by Ambrose Lynch, but the title of the corporation used the name of a college which would not be on the site for another 12 years. It would be a magnificent building rising above a few wooden homes, rivaling the Government Printing Office in size. Its size and splendor were cause for comment and attention. The Church would actually be a magnet for development, but it would be decades before the neighborhood would be densely populated. If there were not already enough causes for future confusion its opening on the Day that John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry would set the stage for even more challenges.
Topics to pursue and left over pieces
Un resolved Issues:
Jesuits ran rump parish out of the Seminary chapel, did this precede or follow the permission to found a parish? Is it actually the beginning of St. Aloysius?
Did the impetus come from more requests by the Provincial to the Archbishop or from a desire of Matthews and O’Toole to shed of them?
Who is the villain in the Orphanage piece? Did the Trustees want to locate in sq 622 or did they just want the land- what is the role of the orphan gender issue and Kenrick?
How, when and for how much money did Lynch acquire Sqs 621, 622 and 623? Is there any other evidence of motives or deals or mortgage?
Did the Society only seek to acquire another quarter block, did Lynch concoct his plan at a time when the economy in the District was flat?
Compile lists of Provincials and Archbishops
The Church of Washington
Some of the slaves working on the construction in the city were from Catholic Maryland and joined the Church of their owners. Many of the immigrant laborers were Catholics. Henry Hoban and Pierre L’Enfant Both Holy Trinity Parish in Georgetown claim founding dates of 1794. Both began as small chapels serving the immigrant and local populations.
The population was not always so low or the activity so limited. A national capital in the midst of a Civil War would require more military planners, and more suppliers. Washington’s location in the midst of secessionist and would be secessionists meant that the military would not come to Washington just to plan and buy but to defend, convalesce and die.
Even before the shooting began at Ft. Sumter the prospect of conflict infected the city.
Troop movements
Hotels
Cattle and supplies
Hospitals
How it affect the parish??
The Neighborhood
Writing in 1896 the author of Gonzaga’s Diamond jubilee history reflected a common view that the move of Gonzaga from downtown to the frontiers of North Capitol Street was disastrous, “There were many who considered this change of site a serious blow to the College and certainly nothing since the transfer has occurred to demonstrate its advantageousness.” (pp 91-92) It had been deemed too remote for either an orphanage or a girl’s school. That author saw then as doomed by the local environment:
The whole country about them was little more than a prairie at the time. There were a few houses sparsely scattered about, and only by courtesy, on Account of Propinquity to the city and inclusion within the corporation limits, could the highways and byways in the immediate neighborhood be called streets. For a few years the sisters labored on, since there was a hope that the long expected extension of the city would take that direction- out by North Capitol Street- but their hopes were doomed to disappointment (p 92-95)
If the President looked up while descending the stairs after the church dedication, he would have seen four houses in the area of the current Union Center Plaza and another twenty or so along first street NE between G and K. Beyond Second Street were open fields dotted with the occasional house.
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