Although Catholics in Leonardtown most likely began celebrating Mass in private homes sometime around 1710, St. Aloysius Church's first building was constructed in 1766 by Fr. James Walton, S.J., one of the Jesuit priests who resided at Newtown. While researching some of the newly digitized records from the Jesuit’s Maryland Province Archives, I recently discovered a list of names by Fr. Walton that most likely includes some of our earliest parishioners! In this brief article, I'd like to share a bit about our parish history and this early list.

Our Parish Beginnings

Although the Maryland colony began in 1634 as a place of religious toleration, anti-Catholic laws soon made it difficult to practice the faith locally: Beginning in 1689, Catholics were barred from civil and military offices in Maryland. By 1702, Anglicanism became the established, state-funded religion of the colony. In 1704, Catholics in Maryland were prohibited from having public places of worship and were permitted to celebrate Mass only in private homes; this prohibition was repealed in 1718, but Masses in homes would have remained commonplace for some time. Beginning in 1716, anyone who wanted to hold public office had to renounce the doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e., the change of bread and wine into the true Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. In 1756, Catholic landowners in Maryland began to be charged double for their property taxes. In the same year, Maryland lawmakers also attempted to pass two separate bills that would have prohibited any Catholics from owning firearms, gunpowder, or ammunition. Laws that restricted the practice of Catholicism would continue until the American Revolution brought about freedom of religion.[i]

Despite the prevailing anti-Catholic climate, the Jesuit missionaries who served St. Mary’s County enthusiastically and effectively spread the Catholic faith. Priests at St. Inigoes served the entire southern half of the county, and priests at Newtown served the entire northern half. One Jesuit priest, Fr. James Walton, S.J. gained a reputation as “the great builder of churches,” because he oversaw the construction of four local chapels in the decades surrounding the American Revolution:

• In 1766, while residing at Newtown, he oversaw the construction of the first wooden chapel of St. Aloysius in Leonardtown, a predecessor of the current St. Aloysius Church.[ii]
• Soon after, while residing at Newtown, he oversaw the construction of the second wooden chapel at St. John’s in Hollywood, predecessor of the current St. John’s Church.[iii]
• In 1784, while residing at St. Inigoes, he oversaw the sturdy brick construction of St. Ignatius Church in St. Inigoes, which remains standing.[iv]
• In 1796, while residing at St. Inigoes, he oversaw the construction of St. Nicholas Church at Patuxent River, predecessor of the current chapel at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.[v]

St. Mary’s County Catholics owe much to the missionary zeal of Fr. Walton. You can see the site of St. Aloysius Church's first building within our old cemetery on Cemetery Road. Fr. Walton is buried at St. Ignatius Church Cemetery in St. Inigoes, Maryland.

Fr. Walton’s List of Catholics

At some point during Fr. Walton’s ministry, he wrote a list of the names of 480 Catholics, including 93 enslaved people. Today this handwritten 18^th century list is preserved in the Maryland Province Archives at Georgetown University, and it has been recently digitized and made available online.[vi] The same list is included in Edwin Beitzell’s very helpful book The Jesuit Missions of St. Mary’s County, Maryland.

For some time, though, I’ve been perplexed by this list. Edwin Beitzell’s book describes it as Fr. Walton’s St. Inigoes congregation in 1794, but this conflicts with my genealogical research of the thirteen Wathens found among the names. I’ll spare you some of the details, but here’s the gist of my confusion: It is well documented that many of the Wathens on Fr. Walton’s list were either deceased or had moved from St. Mary’s County well before 1794, and some are known to have lived near Newtown, not St. Inigoes. Was Fr. Walton’s document misinterpreted?

Now that the original manuscript can be viewed online, I recently decided to try to solve this mystery. I have written an article detailing my findings that is set to be published in the summer edition of The Chronicles of St. Mary’s, the journal of the St. Mary’s County Historical Society, but here’s a quick summary: Fr. Walton served at Newtown from 1765 to 1784, then at St. Inigoes from 1784 to 1803, and he seems to have carried this 10-page untitled list of names from Newtown to St. Inigoes. There is no doubt that Fr. Walton wrote the list between 1765 and 1772 while he ministered at Newtown, not St. Inigoes. Decades later in 1794, Fr. Walton wrote the number of Easter communicants at St. Inigoes and Patuxent on the bottom of one of the pages, most likely because he was considering the construction of St. Nicholas Church. This tally of 1794 communicants led historians like Edwin Beitzell to misinterpret the untitled list as the 1794 congregation of St. Inigoes.

The Faith of Our Ancestors

I realize that not everyone enjoys diving into the details of history and historical documents, but this is a significant find for our parish history. Right around the time that Fr. Walton built our first church building, he seems to have written the names of 480 Catholics who were served by the Newtown Jesuits. This was just before the Revolutionary War, when anti-Catholic laws were still in place in Maryland and parish records were still very scarce. The people from Fr. Walton’s list lived across the northern part of St. Mary’s County, not just Leonardtown, but some of them would have likely helped to construct our first church building and attended Mass here once it was completed. Others would have gone to Mass in Newtown, in Hollywood, or other homes and chapels in northern St. Mary's.

As I think about the era in which our first church was built – decades before the Revolutionary War brought about the religious freedom for which America is known – I can’t help but appreciate the tenacity and dedication our earliest parishioners must have had. Even when Maryland laws opposed the practice of the Catholic faith, they fought to build a place where the Mass could be offered and Catholic Tradition could be handed on.

Many of our earliest parishioners, in fact, undoubtedly put their lives on the line to secure the freedom of religion for which they longed: By my count, over half of the men on Fr. Walton’s census supported the Revolutionary War by enlisting to fight, by providing supplies, or by signing the Oath of Allegiance. While local Protestants were sometimes more ambivalent about the war, local Catholics showed great eagerness to break free from Britain’s anti-Catholic governance.[vii]

If you enjoy local history, especially if you had ancestors living here in northern St. Mary’s County during the eighteenth century, I encourage you to flip through the 10-page digitized list of local Catholics at Digital Georgetown. Some of the most common last names on it are Mattingly, Spalding, Wathen, Howard, Melton, Shercliff, Knott, and Clark. May all of us today imitate the dedication to the Catholic faith that our forebears demonstrated over two hundred and fifty years ago.