File:St. Mary's Catholic Church & Rectory - Petersville.jpg

Summary

St. Mary's Catholic Church & Rectory - Petersville

As a part of his will of 1819, Gov. Thomas Sim Lee provided funds for a Catholic church to be named St. Mary at Petersville near his estate, Needwood. He wanted to replace the old log building used as early as 1810 with a permanent brick building where slaves and their masters and free blacks in the area could worship (Archives, Maryland Society of Jesus, Woodstock Letters, Vol. 5, 1876, p.107).

The slaves sat behind their masters in the rear of the church. It was built between 1826-1828 by slaves and free black laborers from the nearby Merrywood and Needwood plantations, who made and carried the bricks for the structure. In 1873, it was renovated to the current structure. Parishioners came from plantations and farms in the area. Among these worshipers were several generations of the Smothers and Holland families.

Associated with the church was also a school for black youngsters started by Father John Gaffney in 1873; in 1874 approximately 100 children attended this school. This may have been the first officially organized school for black children in Maryland. The school was reported in the parish papers until 1912. The building was razed in 1977.

(Information from “As it Was in the Beginning, is Now and Can Be”, by Connie Koenig, 2009; Photo by Peter Wenner).

Paul Allen: My family has attended St Mary's for over a hundred years, my great-grand parents, a great-uncle and my father are buried in the cemetery there, I'll be the fourth generation Allen planted there.

Gary Smothers: I'll be the fourth generation from the Smothers/Holland families to be buried there.