As a lover of local Catholic history, I was very excited to discover that the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus has recently completed a massive project to scan all their pre-1900 materials and place them online. Hundreds of years of local Jesuit records – including many from our own parish – are now easily viewable on DigitalGeorgetown.

A little bit of historical background is necessary to appreciate these records: From the settling of the colony of Maryland in 1634 until the 1960s, the Catholics of St. Mary’s County were served by priests of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. These Jesuit priests lived together in community houses, from which they traveled to administer the various local parishes. The earliest Jesuits residences were at Newtown (i.e., St. Francis Xavier Church) in the northern part of the county and St. Inigoes (i.e., St. Ignatius Church, now at Webster Field) in the southern part of the county. Eventually St. Aloysius Church in Leonardtown replaced Newtown as the central residence in northern St. Mary’s County. The Jesuits often kept good records of their work, including sacramental records, account books, diaries, and letters to their superiors.

Today, the Lauinger Library Building at Georgetown University, which is run by the Jesuits, preserves many such documents from the work of the priests here in St. Mary’s County and the other mission fields of the Society of Jesus. I’ve traveled to the Lauinger Library several times over the past few years to review sacramental records for my genealogical research, and I can attest to the copious accounts kept by the Jesuits. The staff at the library is very welcoming, but getting there and back requires a four-hour round trip through unpleasant city traffic. I’m very happy, then, to be able to review all the pre-1900 records from the comfort of home!

If you’re interested in perusing the available records, here are a couple of areas of interest:

• Series 04: Records of the Houses – The documents in this series come from the various Jesuit houses, including those in St. Mary’s County, Maryland.

  • Subseries 4.09: Newtown and Leonardtown (St. Mary's County, Md.), 1794 - 1982 – These documents were from the Jesuits who lived in the northern part of St. Mary’s County, first at Newtown and then at St. Aloysius Church in Leonardtown. The 16 volumes of sacramental records may be of particular interest to those who have local ancestors.

• Series 05: Records of the Maryland Mission

  • These are the earliest records of the Jesuit missionaries here in Maryland, including the history of Fr. Andrew White, S.J. Some sacramental records are also included in these early documents.

There are many gems hidden within these old records. Last week, for example, I found an interesting piece of evidence about one of my 18th-century relatives: I've long known that Henry Hudson Wathen III, an overseer of the Jesuit's Newtown tobacco plantations from about 1794 to 1796, became a well-known bourbon distiller in Kentucky. The account books at Newtown provide evidence that Henry Hudson Wathen was already distilling whiskey when he lived here in St. Mary's County. You can read about that discovery at TheWathens.com.

The digitization of these records by the Society of Jesus will undoubtedly be a great source of information for both professional and amateur historians, though navigating the old handwritten pages can be daunting. For those who would like a more reader-friendly synopsis of the history of the local Jesuits, drawn from materials in these same archives, I’d highly recommend Edwin W. Beitzell’s definitive book, The Jesuit Missions of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, which is available for purchase at the St. Mary’s County Historical Society in Leonardtown.

Article Photo: Old St. Aloysius Church in Leonardtown. This second church building was erected in 1846 and was used until 1959. St. Aloysius, exterior view of church; John Brosnan, S.J., Photographic Collection, undated 8 x 10 photo; Woodstock Theological Library, Washington, DC; consulted as “St. Aloysius - Leonardtown,” Digital Georgetown (http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1046210 : accessed 29 January 2024).