File:Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church 1987.jpg

Summary

Churches

Brunswick: 100 Years of Memories (1990)

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Saint Francis of Assisi Catholic Church was originally the mission church of St. Mary's in Petersville, which was the original Catholic house of faith in the area. In 1890 a small church was begun on Seventh Avenue in Brunswick by Fr. John M. Barry, and it was completed in 1894. Its cornerstone was laid by James Cardinal Gibbons. Lillian Wenner Rice remembers the vacant church still standing but vacant around 1908 on "Catholic Hill." Ernestine Wenner Phillips recalls the empty decaying house in her young childhood in the 1930s. The children of the neighborhood used to play in and around the church, calling it the haunted house. When Laura Ambrose (Mrs. George) moved to that area in 1933, only a shell remained, and by the time she moved away in 1941, that too was removed. In 1901 a church, rectory, school and convent were built on the present site at B Street and First Avenue under the direction of Fr. James O'Connell. /// see BH 20 April 1906: The “seminary” was moved from its site on New York Hill to 1st & B in 1906. Lay teachers taught at the Parochial School from 1904 until the Baltimore Ursuline Sisters took charge of the school in 1910. There were four sisters who resided in the convent house adjacent to the school, and these four sisters taught all twelve grades, each teaching three grades per classroom. By 1922 the school had an enrollment of 82 pupils— 40 girls and 42 boys—according to records in the Archdiocese of Baltimore archives. In the very late 1920s the Sisters left the school and the liffle parochial school was again under the tutelage of lay teachers. At that time, only the elementary grades—one through eight—were offered. The school continued in operation until it closed its doors in 1938. The brass bell that is on display at the entrance of St. Francis Church was originally cast for the church on Seventh Avenue, and bears the following inscription:

                                                           St. Francis Church 
                                                              Brunswick, Md. 
                                                              Leo XIII, Pope 
                                                    James Gibbons, Card. Arch. B. 
                                                            of Baltimore, Md. 
                                                        Cast March 20th, 1895

W-BLC