In 1641, Fr. Andrew White, an English-born Jesuit priest, and a few companions moved several miles upriver from St. Mary’s City, the first English settlement in the Maryland colony. Intending to preach the Gospel to Native Piscataway people, Fr. White and his companions established a small settlement on a point of land on the banks of the Port Tobacco River near its confluence with the Potomac River. Fr. White named this point of land Chapel Point.

Fr. White’s ministry to the Piscataway was short-lived.  The Jesuits were forced to abandon their original settlement at Chapel Point in 1645 largely due to the hostility of English Protestants across the Potomac River in Virginia. However, in 1662, after receiving a land grant of 4,000 acres from the Maryland colony’s Catholic proprietor, Lord Baltimore, the Jesuits returned to Chapel Point. This time, another Jesuit priest, Fr. Henry Warren, built a log chapel at the river’s edge at Chapel Point.  This chapel represented the beginning of a permanent Jesuit presence in the area.

In 1697, the Jesuits built a small brick chapel and residence on a bluff overlooking the original settlement on the river. (This original brick chapel now serves as the sacristy for the present St. Ignatius Church.) They leased the remainder of their land to White indentured servants, who cleared and farmed the land. The Jesuits intended to finance their ministry to the Catholic settlers through the sale of the produce of these farms, primarily tobacco.

By the early 18th century, the Jesuits had begun to shift from using White indentured servants to farm their land to using Black enslaved persons. By the middle of the 18th century, the Jesuits were relying entirely on the forced labor of Black enslaved persons to work their land.

In 1741, the Jesuits constructed a large, two-story Georgian-style manor house, known as St. Thomas Manor, to serve as a headquarters for the entire Jesuit mission in the American colonies and as a residence for the Jesuits serving the free White and the enslaved Black Catholics living in the vicinity.   From this base, Jesuits rode out to the many small mission churches that they had started in what is now Charles and Prince George’s Counties. 

In 1798, the Jesuits at St. Thomas Manor built a brick church adjacent to the manor house to replace the original 1697 chapel.

By the 1820s, the Jesuit plantations in southern Maryland were no longer profitable for a number of reasons. The revenue they generated was hardly enough to support their enslaved laborers, let alone finance the growing Jesuit ministries in the region.  Furthermore, the Jesuits had begun to prioritize caring for and educating the White Catholic immigrants who were streaming into the northern cities of Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Finally, in 1839, the Jesuits sold their remaining enslaved persons., applying a large portion of the proceeds of the sale to pay off the debt they had incurred expanding and operating Georgetown College in Washington DC.  Thereafter, White and freed Black tenant farmers worked the Jesuit farms at Chapel Point.

The interior of the manor house and church was entirely destroyed by fire in 1866. Only the exterior brick walls of both structures were left standing. The church and house were quickly rebuilt within those surviving walls.

The Jesuits at St. Thomas Manor continued to ride out to the surrounding mission churches well into the early 1900s. In the 1920s, these mission churches became independent parishes with their own resident Jesuit pastors. Finally, in the 1960s, all of these parishes, except St Ignatius at Chapel Point, the mother church, were transferred to the control the new Archdiocese of Washington, DC.  The Jesuits continued to serve at St. Ignatius at Chapel Point, however.

By 1971, the Jesuits had sold all but 27.6 acres of the original land holdings at Chapel Point. The core complex of buildings on the site is presently subject to a preservation easement held by the Maryland Historic Trust.

Jesuits have served at St. Ignatius Church without interruption since Fr. Warren established his log chapel on the river at Chapel Point  in 1662.  St. Ignatius is the oldest continuously-active Roman Catholic parish in the United States.

• https://www.jesuits.org 
• https://www.jesuitseast.org