St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland)

St. Francis Xavier Church, or Old Bohemia, is a historic Roman Catholic church located at Warwick, Cecil County, Maryland, United States. It is located on what was once the Jesuit estate known as Bohemia Manor.

St. Francis Xavier Church
St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland) is located in Maryland
St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland)
St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland) is located in the United States
St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland)
Location1445 Bohemia Church Road, Warwick, Maryland
Coordinates39°26′16″N 75°48′12″W
Area123.8 acres (50.1 ha)
Built1792 (1792)
NRHP reference No.75000884[1]
Added to NRHPOctober 10, 1975

History

Beginning in 1704 the Society of Jesus bought a farm and initiated missionary activities on the site, thereby establishing a second mission in Maryland half a century after the foundation of the Newtown Manor mission in St. Mary's County, Maryland.[2]

A school here taught many distinguished early American Catholic leaders, including future archbishop John Carroll and his cousin, founding father Charles Carroll. Priests assigned to this mission evangelized in the Delmarva Peninsula, including the modern Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Diocese of Wilmington. Perhaps the most famous grave in the graveyard is of Catherine ("Kitty") Knight (1775-1855), credited for saving an elderly neighbor, a church and much of Georgetown, Maryland during the War of 1812, although her own house burned to the ground.[3]

Structure

The most historic properties on the site are a brick church, constructed shortly after the American Revolutionary War and dedicated in 1797, and an early-19th-century brick rectory connected by a one-story hyphen. The church consists of a four-bay-deep by three-bay-wide brick structure, with a 3-story brick tower added on the southwest facade of the church subsequent to its original building in 1792. The rectory is a five-bay-long, 2+1⁄2-story brick building with a two-bay-long hyphen on one end and a two-bay-long kitchen on the other. Also on the property is a public graveyard, as well as a relatively modern barn and farmhouse. A fire gutted the church's interior in 1912, but the church was rebuilt within the old walls. Regular services discontinued in the 1920s, but resumed in modern times. The Old Bohemia Historical Society, begun by a Catholic, a Quaker and a Methodist in 1954, bought the property's core 120 acres and now maintains the site.[4][5]

The St. Francis Xavier Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.[1]

See also
  • Joseph C. Cann, History of Saint Francis Xavier Church and Bohemia Plantation, Now Known as Old Bohemia, Warwick, Maryland (Old Bohemia Historical Society, 1976)
  • Mary DeVine Dunn, Lillian DeVine, St. Francis Xavier Church, Warwick, Maryland, "Old Bohemia": Its History, the Burial Register : Historical Notes (DeWitt Publishing, 1966)
  • List of Jesuit sites

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. Bourne, Michael (December 1973). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: St. Francis Xavier Church" (PDF). Maryland Historical Trust. Retrieved 2016-01-01.
  3. Love, William H. (June 1908). "Two Maryland Heroines". Maryland Historical Magazine. 3 (2): 136.
  4. Arnett, Earl; Brugger, Robert J.; and Edward C. Papenfuse. Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State (2nd ed.) The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999 p. 141.
  5. "The Secret Mission of Old Bohemia". 30 November 2003.
  • Bohemia 1704–2004: A History of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Shrine in Cecil County, Maryland. By Thomas J. Peterman. (The Bohemian Historical Society, Devon, Pennsylvania: William T. Cooke Publishing Co. 2004).

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