By Bernard A. Cook

In 1745, George Gordon established a tobacco inspection house on the Potomac near what is now the foot of Wisconsin Avenue. The site was chosen as the farthest point that ocean-going ships could navigate upriver before reaching the fall line of the Potomac. A community developed from this nucleus.

In 1751, the legislature of Maryland authorized the organization of this community as the “Town of George”; the town was incorporated in 1789. It grew, fueled by the export trade in tobacco from the plantations and farms of Maryland. With the influx of new residents from the Maryland countryside came enslaved persons, and Georgetown became an important center for buying and selling the enslaved. Around 1760, George Beattie set up a pen or market for enslaved persons on the corner of what is now Wisconsin Avenue and O Street.

African Americans, enslaved and free, constituted a large segment of the new town’s population. The 1800 census reported that of the 5,120 Georgetown residents 1,449 were enslaved and 227 were free Black residents. The free Black population of Georgetown grew significantly in the early nineteenth century. In 1820, there were 1,521 enslaved persons and 894 free Blacks in Georgetown. The free Blacks at that time constituted 12 percent of Georgetown’s population. (1) The census of 1830 listed 1,115 enslaved and 1,204 free Black persons in Georgetown. This growth in the free Black community can be attributed to enslavers freeing enslaved persons and to the enslaved, who were able to earn money on their own, purchasing their own freedom. (2)

Many of the enslaved in Georgetown were allowed to hire themselves out. They often did skilled work and were paid for it. The hired-out enslaved person would live in quarters around Georgetown provided by the “owner.” Two small cottages at 3410 Volta Place, for example, provided housing for hired-out enslaved persons. The hired-out enslaved person would turn his earnings over to his “owner,” who would then return a portion to the enslaved. Those enslaved who were able to accumulate enough cash to purchase their freedom became part of Georgetown’s free Black community. Others gained freedom and free Black status in gratitude for faithful service or through wills. In addition, Georgetown’s free Black population included descendants of indentured servants who had successfully sued for their freedom, the children of free Black persons, and individuals who had escaped bondage. (3)

There were numerous efforts to control Georgetown’s growing number of Black residents. A 1795 law forbade more than seven Black persons to congregate. The exception to this law was congregation for the purpose of religious services. In the 1830s, free Black persons were required to register and present on demand certificates verifying their free status. In 1848, a series of oppressive restrictions, the “Black Code Ordinances of the Corporation of Georgetown,” were imposed. (4)

When Holy Trinity parish was established in 1787, Black Catholics, free and enslaved, formed a significant portion of the initial parish community. In the early nineteenth century when Irish and German Catholic immigrants were adding to the Catholic population of Washington and Georgetown, African Americans, dubbed “involuntary immigrants” by historian William W. Warner, (5) were brought to Georgetown by Catholic families who moved to Georgetown from Maryland.

According to Warner, Blacks constituted approximately 30 percent of the parish from its founding until after the Civil War. However, Stephen Dubuisson, S.J., Holy Trinity’s pastor from 1825 to 1826 and 1831 to 1833, indicated that 50 percent of the parishioners who died during the cholera epidemic of 1832 were Black. The 50 percent figure could be attributed to greater susceptibility of the parish’s Black parishioners because of their living conditions. Nevertheless, 44 percent of the parishioners dying and buried in Holy Rood Cemetery between 1833 and 1840 were Black. (6) Over time, an increasing proportion of Holy Trinity’s Black parishioners were reported to be free rather than enslaved. Between 1795 and 1804, for example, only 4 percent of the marriages and baptisms recorded at Holy Trinity noted that both husband and wife were free. Between 1810 and 1820, however, both couples were free in 12 percent of the Black marriages, and between 1820 and 1830, the proportion had risen to 47 percent. (7)

Although White parishioners accepted Black Catholics, they were not integrated into parish life. In the original church, now Ignatius Chapel, completed in 1794, seating in pews was only available to Whites who were able to pay pew rent. Black parishioners, free and enslaved, were required to stand in the rear of the church. When that church was enlarged in the 1820s, Black parishioners, free and enslaved, were relegated to elevated side galleries accessible by outside stairs. Even after the present church was completed in 1851, Black parishioners had to continue to use the old church. Although eventually allowed to worship in the new church, they were relegated at first to side galleries. When these were removed and an enlarged choir loft was extended across the back of the church, they had to sit in the segregated balcony. (8) Only after White parishioners had received Holy Communion could Black parishioners approach the Communion rail.

When Joseph DeTheux, S.J., pastor of Holy Trinity from 1818 to 1825, organized the first parish confraternity, the Confraternity of the Living Rosary, 130 Black parishioners joined, constituting 34 percent of the confraternity’s members. However, the confraternity was segregated. There were separate membership lists and separate officers for the Black and White branches. (9)

Francis Neale, S.J., the founding pastor of Holy Trinity parish, recorded 111 marriages and baptisms of African Americans at Holy Trinity during the first ten years of the parish. During that same period, there were 254 marriages and baptisms of White parishioners.

The first marriage listed in the parish registry was celebrated on January 1, 1795. It was between David Thomas, a free Black man, and an enslaved woman who was only listed as Philis. Enslaved persons were listed as “property” and had to receive permission of their enslavers to marry. Philis was listed as the property of Elizabeth Doyle. (10) The second Black marriage registered in the parish, March 2, 1795, was of an enslaved couple, Eleanor and James. They were each owned by different enslavers. (11)
The first baptisms listed in the parish registry were celebrated in February 1795. The fourth infant to be baptized that month was an enslaved child, John, the son of Charles, also enslaved, the property of Martin Waring of Georgetown. Two other enslaved children were among the seven children to be christened that month: Anthony, the son of Catherine, an enslaved person, property of Dolly Barber, who lived near Georgetown, and Mary, whose parents, Nathanial and Maria were enslaved, the property of Ignatius Smith, who also lived near Georgetown. (12)

Although African Americans, free and enslaved, were accepted as members of Holy Trinity parish, the climate at Holy Trinity from its founding was permeated by the acceptance of slavery, racial separation, and even the assumption of Black racial inferiority by its early priests and White parishioners. The Jesuits in the 18th and 19th centuries participated in the institution of slavery. They held enslaved persons, and bought and sold enslaved persons, but they regularly stressed the obligations of enslavers toward those they enslaved and opposed the separation of married enslaved couples.

If this reeks of noblesse oblige, it at least asserted that enslavers were not at liberty to treat enslaved persons however they pleased. Enslavers, in the opinion of the Jesuits, had obligations as Christians to those they enslaved, who after all were persons redeemed by Christ. In 1749, a Jesuit, George Hunter, during a retreat at Port Tobacco, had argued, “Charity to Negroes is Due from all particularly their masters. As they are members of Jesus Christ, redeemed by his precious blood, they are to be dealt with in a charitable, Christian, paternal manner.” (13)

Joseph P. Mobberly, the Jesuit brother who administered the Jesuit property at St. Inigoes in the early 19th century, defended the institution of slavery, but was ambivalent about its consequences. Mobberly argued, “Slavery is not only lawful, reasonable and good, but that it is also necessary.” (14) However, he felt that the responsibilities of the enslavers for the spiritual and material welfare of enslaved persons were such that the enslavers would be better off materially and certainly, in view of eternal salvation, much better off spiritually without enslaved persons. (15) He concluded, “It is better to sell for a time, or to set your people free.” (16)

The American Catholic Church and the American Jesuits, after the order was re-constituted in 1814, (17) accepted slavery as part of the American fabric. Francis Neale, S.J., who was pastor of Holy Trinity from 1790 to 1817, did not challenge the institution, but he and other Jesuits sought to promote “paternalistic” treatment of enslaved African Americans. Nevertheless, Neale participated fully in the institution of slavery. In 1814, he personally sold an enslaved person, Isaac, who had run away from Georgetown College. (18) While president of the college as well as pastor of Holy Trinity, Fr. Neale was sued by Priscilla Queen, an enslaved woman. Queen asserted that a female forebear had been free, and that as a result she should be free. Represented by Francis Scott Key, she lost the case on the grounds that her assertion was based upon double hearsay. (19)

Despite the failure of the Church to address the systemic evil of American slavery, Peter De Vos, S.J., at Holy Trinity dramatically expressed his conviction that the will of the enslaver was not absolute. In 1827 Fr. De Vos refused the sacraments to a parishioner who had sold an enslaved woman, separating her from her husband. Fr. De Vos castigated the parishioner’s unwillingness to accept offers to reunite the couple as the “astonishing and crying shame of the congregation.” (20)

In 1819 John McElroy, S.J., who served from 1817 to 1822 as assistant pastor at Holy Trinity (and from 1845 and 1846 as pastor), opened an evening Sunday school specifically for African American children in the schoolhouse opposite the church. Fr. McElroy stated that this project was intended, “1st to prevent Catholic Negroes from schools kept on Sundays by Methodists, etc. 2nd to teach them their prayers and Catechism at the same time they learn to spell and read.” (21) Teaching Blacks to read and spell was explicitly prohibited by Black Codes of the southern states but was allowed in the District of Columbia.

An endeavor to provide education for African Americans was launched by Anne Marie Becraft, a daughter of a prominent free Black family. Becraft’s grandmother was reputedly a free Black, who worked on the estate of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. Carroll was an uncle to bishop John Carroll, the founder of Georgetown University. Anne Marie Becraft’s parents were William and Sarah Becraft. William was born on Carroll’s estate and after moving to Georgetown became the chief steward at the Union Hotel. Both William and Sarah were buried in Holy Rood. (22)

In 1820, when Anne Marie Becraft was 15, she began teaching at a school for Black children located on Dunbarton St., and in 1827 she opened a school for female Black children in Georgetown with the financial assistance of Black Catholics from Holy Trinity and with the support of the Sisters of the Visitation and John Van Lommel, S.J., who served as pastor of Holy Trinity. The school was located across the street from Visitation Convent. (23) Marie Becraft ran the school, which had an average of 35 boarder and day-school students, for several years. However, in 1831, after preparing an assistant to succeed her at the school, she entered the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an order of African American nuns in Baltimore, and took the name Sister Mary Aloysius in honor of the Jesuit saint. The oldest building on the campus of Georgetown University was re-named Becraft Hall in 2017. It had previously been named for William McSherry, S.J., the Jesuit Provincial who oversaw the 1838 sale of 272 people enslaved by the Jesuits to plantation owners in southern Louisiana. (24)

Fr. Van Lommel, while he was at Holy Trinity, operated a school across the street from Georgetown’s gate, that provided education to young Black males three days a week. Amid the heightened tensions following Nat Turner’s 1831 uprising in Virginia, and growing White hostility to educating African Americans, both Becraft’s school and Fr. Van Lommel’s school closed in 1833. (25)

In addition to the enslaved, there were a growing number of free Black parishioners like the Becrafts among Holy Trinity’s early parishioners. Notable among the free Black families of Holy Trinity were the Butlers. Edward Butler married Bett, an enslaved woman, on May 2, 1797. Their marriage was witnessed by Susanna and Mary Sewall, and John Carbery. “Many others” attended the wedding. (26)

The free status of Edward Butler and the rest of the Butler family was the result of a long legal struggle. They were descended from Eleanor, known as Irish Nell, who was a young indentured servant under an obligation of service to Charles Calvert, the proprietary governor of Maryland. Calvert apparently rented the services of Nell to Major William Boarman. At the Boarman estate Eleanor fell in love with Charles Butler, an enslaved man. Calvert tried to dissuade Eleanor. He reputedly told her, “What a pity that so likely young girl as you are should fling herself away so as to marry a Negro . . . you’ll make slaves of your children and their posterity.” (27)

In the short term his warning was correct. However, Eleanor was not the only White indentured servant who chose to marry an enslaved person. Historian Aaron Wilkinson asserts, “Masters had begun encouraging their indentured servant women of European descent to marry their African slaves as a way to keep the whole family in bondage for life.” (28) A Maryland law of 1664 had explicitly repudiated the principle that the free status of a mother would bestow freedom upon her children. Eleanor and Charles Butler were married in August 1681, in a public and well attended ceremony at the Boarman estate. A Catholic priest officiated.

The marriage took place one month before the Maryland Assembly passed a law that would have affirmed Eleanor’s freedom and that of any children whom she had with Charles. The law stated: “any such free-born English or White woman servant [who] would intermarry, or contract in matrimony with any slave . . . shall be, and is by this present act, absolutely discharged, manumitted, and made free.” Not only would the woman not lose her freedom as a result of marrying an enslaved person, but “all children born of such free born women . . . shall be free as the women so married.” (29)

According to that law, Eleanor should not have lost her freedom, nor should any of her children have been enslaved. It was on the basis of that law that the descendants of Eleanor and Charles sought their freedom. At first the argument against their liberation was that their grandmother had married before the 1681 law was enacted and thus she and her descendants fell under the earlier 1664 law. Charles and Eleanor had six children, John (Jack), Sarah, Catherine (Kate), Elizabeth (Abigale, Abby), Moll, and Nan. The family was not reconciled to accept enslavement. John escaped across the Potomac to Virginia. There he avoided capture and earned enough money to purchase his freedom. Kate, who had four children, was also able through her industry to purchase her freedom. (30)

Eleanor’s great and great-great grandchildren waged a long, but eventually successful struggle to achieve their freedom on the basis of the 1681 law. William, a grandchild of Eleanor, and Pegg, a great grandchild, who were first cousins, married. Their children, Mary and William Lazarus, appealed for their freedom on the basis of the 1681 law. The case was filed on September 27, 1763, in Charles County. On September 11, 1770, the court declared them, “discharged and freed . . . from any further servitude.” However, in 1771 the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed the judgment on the basis of the 1664 law. (31)

Nevertheless, the Butler family persisted, and their tenacity was eventually successful. In 1771 the Butlers’ attorney, Jeremiah Townley Chase, renewed the Butlers’ appeal and persuaded the Maryland Court of Appeals to reverse its decision. The Court finally ended the long struggle of the Butlers. It affirmed their freedom. (32)
Two free African American women, members of the Butler family, Lucy and Liddy Butler, had a tremendous impact upon Holy Trinity parish during its early years. (33) William Warner writes that they “did more to bring together a strongly committed Black Catholic community than the combined efforts of the church itself or the white laity.” (34) During the parish’s first quarter century the two sisters served as godmothers to 65 of the Black children, enslaved and free, baptized in the parish. That number, 65, amounted to approximately one out of three of the baptisms of Black children at Holy Trinity during that time. The role of godmother was particularly important among enslaved Catholic African Americans. If parents were separated from their children through sale, the godmother could assume the role of emotional support and guidance for their godchild. (35)

The faith and zeal of Black Holy Trinity parishioners, despite the humiliating disdain to which they were subjected, is admirable. The apostolic zeal of Lucy and Liddy Butler was emulated by George and Patience Sibore, both free African Americans, who served as godparents to thirty children, enslaved and free, from across the District and Montgomery County. According to Warner, the Sibores were just as willing to sponsor enslaved children as free children and did not hesitate to sponsor illegitimate children in their desire to bring them within the care of the Church. (36)

Lucy Butler died on November 25, 1821, and was buried the next day (37) in the College Ground Cemetery. That burial ground, also known as the Trinity Burial Ground or the Old Burial Ground was established in 1818. It was located on Georgetown’s campus about 100 feet north of where Copley Hall stands today. Before burials there ended in 1833, approximately 1,000 parishioners of Holy Trinity and enslaved persons owned by the university were buried there. During the construction of Copley Hall the disused burial ground was uncovered. Human remains discovered at that time and in 1953, during further construction at the university, were reinterred at Holy Rood Cemetery or at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Historian Carlton Fletcher believes that some 850 bodies were never removed and remain under Red Square and adjacent buildings. (38)

Liddy (Lidia) Butler, who died on January 28, 1834, at the age of 80, was buried in Holy Rood Cemetery which had been established by Holy Trinity parish two years earlier in 1832. The first burial there occurred in April 1833. The records of Holy Trinity parish list 500 African Americans, free and enslaved, buried in Holy Rood. However, Fletcher estimates that the actual number of African Americans buried in Holy Rood must be closer to 1000. (39).

African American parishioners were buried in segregated sections of the cemetery. In addition to Liddy Butler, the funerals of approximately 17 Butlers were celebrated at Holy Trinity between 1818 and 1867. Besides Liddy Butler, Carlton Fletcher lists only two other Butlers who were buried at Holy Rood, Nancy Butler, a free Black, buried in 1834, and Augustus Butler, the seven-year-old son of Charles and Anna Butler, also buried there in 1834. In all probability there were other members of the Butler family, whose funerals were celebrated at Holy Trinity, who were also interred there. (40)

Bits and pieces of the lives of other African Americans, free and enslaved, who are buried in Holy Rood, are known. Among them are Siah Smith, 40, the cemetery’s grave digger, and his wife Lucinda, both of whom died in 1834. (41) In November 1836, Lucinda Thompson, the 6-year-old daughter of John Thompson, an enslaved man, and his free Black wife, Catherine Chandler Thompson, died of burns suffered in her home. (42) Another African American Holy Trinity parishioner suffered the same fate in 1871. Nelly Ridgely, who was in her 80s and lived near Holy Rood, suffered fatal burns in October 1871. Kerosene, which she had spilled on her dress, was ignited by the kitchen fire. She implored her neighbors to send for a priest. However, she died before pastor Charles Stonestreet, S.J., could arrive. She joined her husband Henry, who was buried there in 1865. (43)

White and Black parishioners attended funerals of fellow parishioners of the other race. The extent to which White parishioners and Black parishioners mingled at the funerals is another issue. The Georgetown Courier reported that the funeral at Holy Trinity of Eliza E. Ridgeley, who died in May 1869, “was numerously attended by white and colored friends, who warmly esteemed her through life.” (44) Were the rules governing segregated seating in Holy Trinity’s church altered for the funerals of Black parishioners? John B. Smackum, who lived with his brother at 3624 P Street, died in 1899 at the age of 59. In addition to being a parishioner, he was a long-term employee of Georgetown University. In all probability White as well as Black parishioners attended his funeral and burial at Holy Rood. (45)

The graves of most of Holy Trinity’s Black parishioners who were buried at Holy Rood are no longer marked. The wooden crosses that evidently marked some of their graves have disintegrated. However, the headstones of three members of the Belt family, who lived on 36th St. for four generations from the 1810s to the 1920s have survived. (46) A gravestone in Holy Rood for Maria Smackum has also survived. She died on May 12, 1871. (47)

The Civil War brought an end to slavery in the United States. The institution ended in Georgetown before the end of the war. The enslaved persons who were members of Holy Trinity’s congregation and those owned by the college were freed in 1862. President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862. This act ended slavery in the District of Columbia, and compensated enslavers in the District up to $300 for each emancipated enslaved person. The emancipated received no compensation. (48)

After the Civil War, the percentage of Black parishioners of Holy Trinity declined. William Warner attributes this either to the end of slavery and demographic changes in Georgetown or to dissatisfaction with the parish’s segregation. In the early 20th century Holy Trinity’s African American adult parishioners numbered 357. They petitioned the archbishop of Baltimore (as Washington was not yet a diocese) to establish a parish of their own. In 1923 their request was granted. (49)

Lawrence Schaefer, S.S.J., a Josephite, was tasked by the Archdiocese of Baltimore to establish a parish, Epiphany, for African Americans in the eastern section of Georgetown. Fr. Schaefer at first celebrated Mass in a building located at 28th and P Streets, N.W., Epiphany’s temporary site. (50)

In 1924 the parishioners purchased two vacant lots in the 2400 block of Dumbarton St., N.W. Within two years Epiphany Church had been built. The Black parishioners who left Holy Trinity in order to have their own church and to worship without discrimination were able to have Mass in the basement in 1925 before the upper church was completed. The congregation had financed the construction of Epiphany through their personal contributions, and with funds earned through bake sales, card parties, dances, and a strawberry festival.

Neville Waters, Sr., one of the first parishioners, recalled that, at first, there were only two Masses on Sunday mornings, at 6:30 and 9:30. Parishioners who missed these Masses had to go back to Holy Trinity, where they had to sit in the restricted area in the balcony, separated by a screen from the choir, and wait to receive Communion until all the White parishioners had left the Communion rail.

Everett Payne, who became a policeman, remembered the segregated services at Holy Trinity. When his family moved to the new parish, he served as an altar boy at Epiphany. Like many others among Epiphany’s original parishioners – or, at least, their children – he moved from Georgetown and joined another parish. Dorothy Thomas, a third-generation member of Epiphany, was somewhat unusual. Despite moving to Southeast D.C., she long maintained ties to Epiphany. Her brother kept the family’s home in Georgetown and on Sundays she would make the trip from Southeast. On the first Sunday of the month, through the mid-1980s, Thomas was joined by 30 members of the Sodality, a remnant of the dispersed congregation. However, by 2020 Epiphany no longer reflected its African American foundation. (51)

On April 19, 1994, Holy Trinity offered a public apology at a service at Holy Trinity church to its African American parishioners and their descendants who had suffered discrimination at Holy Trinity. Kathy Millian, a member of Holy Trinity’s Racism and Intercultural Sensitivity Group, read an apology from the parish at the prayer service. “As a parishioner of Holy Trinity and on behalf of all parishioners of Holy Trinity who have gone before me,” she said, “I ask the forgiveness of the African-American members of this parish and their descendants for the discrimination, injustice and unkindness that they and their families suffered here. I apologize for the active wrongs that hurt you and for the wrongs that were caused by us standing by and doing nothing in the face of unfairness. We greatly admire your faith and the courage and strength that led you to establish your own place of worship Epiphany Parish. In the last song of this evening’s service we ask that on judgment day we will find an open door at the house of our Lord Jesus. I pray that the founders of Epiphany and of their families will from this day forward feel that they will find an open door at this house of our Lord Jesus.” (52)

At the Reconciliation service, Dorothy Thomas, who had been a member of Holy Trinity parish from 1912 until the establishment of Epiphany in 1923 shared a story characteristic of the humiliating discrimination that Holy Trinity’s African American parishioners experienced. A new nun told the Holy Trinity African American girls at Sunday school that she was shocked that they “had not been allowed to participate in the May procession in the past and that they would be in the procession that year. When Thomas and the other girls appeared on the appointed day in their white dresses and with their flowers, they sat in a classroom while the white girls lined up and left. After a while, a man came into the room and told them that a mistake had been made and that they would not be in the procession. Her family took the girls to St. Augustine’s Church . . . but by the time they arrived, the May procession was already over. The girls walked back to Georgetown from St. Augustine’s, leaving petals of their flowers along the way as their own devotion to the Blessed Mother.” (53)

For this and for other sins against its Black brothers and sisters, Holy Trinity continues to ask forgiveness.

Notes

1. Mary Beth Corrigan, “Enslaved and Free African-Americans in Early Nineteenth Century Georgetown,” Humanities Council, Sept.14, 2013. Elsa Barraza Mendoza, “Catholic Slaveowners and the Development of Georgetown University’s Slave Hiring System, 1792-1862,” Journal of Jesuit Studies, December 15, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1163/22141332-0801P004.

2. William W. Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors: Catholics and Catholicism in the National Capital, 1787-1860 (Washington, D.C., 1994), p. 8.

3. Kathleen Lesko, Valerie Babb, and Carroll R. Gibbs, Black Georgetown Remembered: A History of the Black Community from the Founding of “The Town of George” in 1751 to the Present Day (Washington, D.C., 1991), pp. 3-4.

4. Andrew Stephen, “Georgetown’s Hidden History: First, it was a slave port. Later, it was a thriving center of black life. Today, it’s a virtually all-white enclave. Why?,” Washington Post, July 16, 2006.

5. Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 88.

6. Ibid., pp. 92 and 119. See also Laurence J. Kelly, S.J., History of Holy Trinity Parish, Washington, D.C., 1795-1945 (Baltimore, Md., 1945), p. 19; Peter J. Albert, “Holy Trinity’s African American Community and the Cholera Epidemic of 1832,” below.

7. Margaret H. McAleer, “The Other Congregation: Patterns of Black Catholic Worship at Holy Trinity Church, Georgetown, D.C., 1795-1845,” unpublished seminar paper, Georgetown University, 1986, p. 21.

8. Peter J. Albert, “’Climbing the Back Stairs’: Segregated Seating at Holy Trinity,” below; St. John’s Episcopal Church at 33rd Street and O Street, NW, founded in 1816, also had an exterior stair built for Black parishioners. Stephen, “Georgetown’s Hidden History”; Corrigan, “Enslaved and Free African-Americans in Early Nineteenth Century Georgetown.”

9. Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 116.

10. Ibid., p. 119; Holy Trinity Church, Marriages and Baptisms, 1795-1805, Digital Georgetown Manuscripts Collection, Georgetown University Library, Booth Family Center for Special Collections, Washington, D.C., p. 1, https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/557003/MARB1795_05.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y; Kelly, History of Holy Trinity Parish, p. 19; Peter J. Albert, “African American Marriages and Baptisms at Holy Trinity, 1795-1815,” below.

11. Holy Trinity Church, Marriages and Baptisms, 1795 to 1805, p. 1.

12. Ibid., p. 3. The marriage register also records marriages between free Blacks and enslaved people as well as between free Black couples. Edward Butler, a free Black married Bett, an enslaved woman, on May 2, 1797, http://hdl.handle.net/10822/557003.

13. Maryland Province Archives, “’Charity to Negroes’: Rev. George Hunter’s Reflections on the Treatment of Slaves, 1749,” Georgetown University Slavery Archive, item 223, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/243.

14. Joseph P. Mobberly, S.J., Papers, “’Slavery Is According to Reason’: The Mobberly Diaries, Part II, August 1823,” Georgetown University Slavery Archive, item 144, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/158.

15. Ibid., “’Masters Must Answer,’ The Mobberly Diaries, Part I, 1820,” Georgetown University Slavery Archive, item 140, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/152.

16. Maryland Province Archives, “‘We are in the dark as long as we keep slaves’: Br. Joseph Mobberly, S.J., calculates the cost savings from emancipation, Feb. 5, 1815,” Georgetown University Slavery Archive, item 58, https://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/66.

17. When Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus for political reasons on July 21, 1773, Jesuits in Maryland reorganized themselves as the Select Body of Clergy, or the Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen. The Maryland legislature chartered this organization in 1792. Catherine the Great, the Russian czarina, forbad the promulgation of the suppression in her territories. She apparently valued the educational work of the many Jesuits who worked in areas of her country annexed in the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795. In 1782 Pius VI gave formal permission for the Society to continue to operate in Russia. Under the umbrella of the Jesuits in Russia, Jesuit provinces were formally reconstituted in Great Britain in 1803, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1803, and in the United States in 1805. Daniel L. Schafly, Jr., “General Repression, Russian Survival, American Success: The ‘Russian’ Society of Jesus and the Jesuits in the United States,” in Jeffrey D. Burson, ed., The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences (New York, 2015), pp. 201-3. On Aug. 7, 1814, Pope Pius VII ended the suppression of the order. A Polish Jesuit, Tadeusz Brzozowski, who had been elected head of the order in Russia in 1805, became the Superior General of the reconstituted order.

18. Peter J. Albert, “Extracts from the Journal of John McElroy, S.J.,” below.

19. Paul S. Maco, “Priscilla Queen v. Francis Neale,” below; Lesko, Babb, and Gibbs, Black Georgetown Remembered, p. 3.

20. Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors. p. 119.

21. “School for Colored Persons at Trinity Church, 1819,” Georgetown University Slavery Archive, item 27, http://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/32; Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 118.

22. Peter J. Albert and Bernard A. Cook, “Anne Marie Becraft – Pathmaker,” below.

23. Ibid.; Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 118.

24. Albert and Cook, “Anne Marie Becraft – Pathmaker.”

25. Ibid.; Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 118.

26. Holy Trinity Church, Marriages and Baptisms, 1795-1805, p. 21. Joseph Carbery, a Jesuit, managed the Jesuit estate St. Inigoes in Maryland. Thomas Carbery, a friend of the Jesuits, was mayor of Washington D.C., from 1822 to 1824, president of National Metropolitan Bank, and had an estate in what is now the Takoma neighborhood.

27. Aaron B. Wilkinson, “Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom: Mulattoes in English Colonial North America and the Early United States Republic,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2013, p. 135, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1hv4k2bc.

28. Ibid., p. 13.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., p. 72. Kate’s children were Jack, Jenny, Ned, and Peg.

31. Ibid., p. 72.

32. Ibid.

33. The Butler sisters, Liddy (Lydia) and Lucy, were great granddaughters of Eleanor (“Irish Nell”) and Charles Butler. Lydia petitioned for her freedom from James Carrico in 1790. Lucy petitioned for her freedom from Benedict Wheeler in May 1792. Both petitions were successful because the Butler sisters were able to prove that they were descendants of a White woman.

34. Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 92.

35. Mary Beth Corrigan, “Lucy and Liddy Butler,” Georgetown University Library, https://library.georgetown.edu/special-collections/manuscripts/blog/liddy-and-lucy-butler; Bernard A. Cook, “The Butler Sisters, below.

36. Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, pp. 91-92.

37. Holy Trinity Church, Deaths, 1818-67, Digital Georgetown Manuscripts Collection, Georgetown University Library, Booth Family Center for Special Collections, Washington, D.C., http://hdl.handle.net/10822/557000.

38. Carlton Fletcher, “Burial Grounds of Holy Trinity Church, Georgetown, D.C.” Newsletter of the Catholic Historical Society of Washington, (July–September 2002), gloverparkhistory.com/cemeteries/holy-rood-cemetery/holy-rood-cemetery/, and Fletcher, “Glover Park History: Historical Sketches of Glover Park, Upper Georgetown, and Georgetown Heights,” https://gloverparkhistory.com/cemeteries/holy-rood-cemetery/holy-rood-cemetery.

39. Fletcher, “Glover Park History.”

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Wesley E. Pippenger, The Georgetown Courier: Marriage and Death Notices, Georgetown, District of Columbia, November 18, 1865 to May 6, 1876 (Westminster, Md., 1998), p. 64.

44. Ibid., p. 30.

45. Fletcher, “Glover Park History.”

46. Peter J. Albert, “Four Generations at Holy Trinity: The Belt Family,” below.

47. Fletcher provides an image of the gravestone in “Glover Park History.”

48. D.C. Emancipation Act, Apr. 16, 1862, Record Group 11, General Records of the United States Government, National Archives. The state of Maryland, which was not in rebellion, was not included in President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863. Following a constitutional convention in Maryland, a new state constitution which outlawed slavery went into effect on Nov. 1, 1864; Peter J. Albert, “Enslavement and Emancipation at Holy Trinity,” below.

49. Peter J. Albert, “The Founding of Epiphany Catholic Church, 1923–26”; Gertrude Turner Waters, “Historical Sketch – Epiphany Catholic Church”; and Kathy Millian, “An Account from Holy Trinity News of the 1994 Reconciliation Service with Epiphany Parishioners,” below; Warner, At Peace with All Their Neighbors, p. 92.

50. Albert, “The Founding of Epiphany Catholic Church,” below.

51. Greg Kitsock, “Keeping the Faith: The Black Churches of Georgetown Endure,” City Paper, Sept. 12-18, 1986.

52. Millian, “An Account from Holy Trinity News of the 1994 Reconciliation Service with Epiphany Parishioners,” below.

53. Ibid.