Description

The first chapel of St. Ignatius was built in St. Mary’s City. In 1704, the colony’s early policies of religious tolerance were abolished, and that chapel was closed. dismantled, and the bricks taken downriver to land owned by the Jesuits in St. Inigoes. The Jesuits had established the mission and its various farms at St. Inigoes in 1637 and established a network of mission outposts nearby among the Piscataway.

Jesuit plantations were established at St. Inigoes and Newtown Neck in St. Mary’s County, St. Thomas Manor in Charles County, White Marsh in Prince George’s County, and Bohemia on the Eastern Shore. All five Jesuit plantations were reliant upon enslaved African labor throughout most of their existence prior to the Civil War. As many as 93 people enslaved at St. Inigoes were sold in the infamous GU – 272 sale to benefit the survival and development of Georgetown College (now Georgetown University).

The present-day St. Ignatius Church was built between 1785 and 1787. The sacristy was added in 1817. It served the parish and continued to host regular Sunday mass services up until the 1930s; thereafter the church held services only for special occasions. The Church is on the National Register of Historic Places.

A large, historic Jesuit burial ground surrounds the church and is open to the public.

The ruins of the St. Inigoes Manor and an active archaeology site are nearby within the gates of the Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s Webster Field Annex and can only be accessed by permission of the U.S. Navy. Additional Information

Still, We Speak (stillwespeak.org)

The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church, Rachel Swarns (book)

Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1717-1838, Thomas Murphy, S.J. (book)

http://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/

https://library.georgetown.edu/slavery-memory-reconciliation/descendant-groups