A NEW LANDMARK ON THE HUDSON.

On the fifteenth day of January, 1903, a notable transfer of a great centre of church influence took place. The Jesuit Novitiate, which has been in Frederick, Maryland, ever since 1833, began on the banks of the Hudson, midway between Hyde Park and Poughkeepsie, a new epoch in its existence.

Whittier has woven a few poetic threads around old Frederick Town by the history or myth, for even Frederick folk are doubtful which it is, of Barbara Fritchie. The famous house itself, where the flag is said to have fluttered from the window, has a habit of shifting about locally, and speculation is always rife there with regard to it. But independently of the poet, war, colonial history, law, education, religion, all contribute their quota of interest to this quaint, oldfashioned town, which looks in many respects as if it had been carved out of some forgotten corner of Europe and dropped down among us as a reminder of other conditions. One end of it is exactly like the approach to a little Dutch hamlet in Flanders called Egenhoven. It never changes. The Baltimore and Ohio was not allowed to run tracks through its purlieus, and a spur to the junction, three miles off, serves as a sufficiency of connection with the outer world. It is rich and well to do, though there are only seven or eight thousand inhabitants, a fair number of whom are dark, the whole with no notable growth. Savings banks abound, a proof of wealth, which the invading armies of the Civil War took note of for extensive requisitions. It deserves the description of Whittier as the "city of clustered spires," and one of its quiet thoroughfares owns to the name of Church Street, and properly so, for there nearly all the churches are grouped, though theologically far apart. Another highway, and one of the two which commerce has dared to encroach upon, is, singularly enough, for such a non-Celtic locality, known as Patrick Street. How it came about, the vulgar know little. As an offset to the fine Visitation Academy, there is a famous Female Seminary ; and in an adjoining street hard by, a Deaf Mute Asylum, a favorite field for the zeal of the Novices, as were the Poor House and Jail at the other end of the town. But the chief local glory is that the author of the "Star Spangled Banner," Francis Scott Key, lies in the handsome cemetery at the southern extremity of the little city, which ends here as

abruptly as the cities in the old world do with their fortifications. Antietam is not far off, at least for country people, and General Lew Wallace met his great reverse at Monocacy Creek, which is within easy walk. Both of these historic facts, along with the comings and goings of Federal and Confederate troops, for this was debatable. ground, will explain how the Novitiate became a hospital in those terrible war times, and how the vigorous novices of those days received some of their Jesuit training by becoming army nurses for the sick and dying. Many a wounded soldier was carried on his stretcher from the battlefield to go to heaven through the doors of that old ramshackle house, which is now being torn down. Bacteria must have revelled in those ruins.

The valley in which Frederick is situated is very fair to look upon as the eye travels along the lofty Catoctin Hills whose deep woods are cut into here and there by prosperous farms high up near the summit. Journey west over them along the well-kept "pike" and you come to the more beautiful Middletown Valley, beyond which, over the Blue Ridge where Rutherford B. Hayes won his glory, lies the bloody field of Antietam. You are there at the upper waters of the Potomac. Harper's Ferry with its memories of John Brown is not far off, and there, as is well known, the country is more than usually picturesque.

It was in 1750 that Charles Carroll, the father of the famous Signer of the Declaration of Independence happened to wander over those mountains on a hunting expedition, having come up from Annapolis where he was then living. Attracted by the beauty of the place he purchased twelve thousand acres of land, for two hundred pounds, though his wife could not understand "why he should throw away so much money for a forest." Here Carroll Manor was established and made into the famous Carrollton which figures in the Declaration of Independence. He divided the estate into farms and tried to gather as many Catholics around him as possible; which explains the presence there, to-day, of the Darnalls, the Boones, the Abells, the Paynes, the Brooks, the Jamisons, the Jarboes and others. Later on, however, Germans, either from the old country or from Pennsylvania, established themselves in the neighborhood, and notably also after the Revolutionary War, a number of Washington's particular friends, the Hessians. This German element gives a distinguishing trait to Frederick, most of it constituted of staunch Lutherans, and furnishing very few converts to the faith. On the contrary many a Catholic has been captured by the usual device of mixed marriages.

The spiritual needs of the Catholics in the first days of this settlement were ministered to by the Jesuits from St. Thomas's Residence, near Port Tobacco, far down the Potomac. No one who is un-familiar with those parts can appreciate what that meant for these early missionaries. Port Tobacco began and ended at the head of an inlet. On it as a "port" the colonists had evidently built high hopes, and until quite recently, it kept its hold as the county seat; an honor which it possesses no longer. The unfaithful Potomac has left it high and dry, and only a skiff can approach its muddy shores. All its hopes like its houses have decayed. At the present day, it is a wearisome enough journey to reach it, in spite of the leisurely railroad that runs within two or three miles of it, even if one comes from as near a place as Baltimore. But in those pre-revolutionary times it required the heart of an apostle to travel through the forests to the new settlement which Carroll had established. Those grand old Jesuit priests did it for thirteen consecutive years, until at last, in 1763, the first permanent residence was established in Frederick. Possibly, however, some assistance was given towards the end, from Conewago, Pa., which was founded in 1758.

Father John Williams appears to have been the first pastor of Frederick, though the deed of gift was made out only two years later, to the General Superior Father Hunter. It is interesting to note that the land was given "in consideration of five shillings current money" and that the name affixed to the document was that of "John Cary"; so that it was an Irishman who was the first benefactor of the Society of Jesus in Frederick.

When the Society was suppressed in 1773 Father Framback was pastor; an old man already : "his sick calls however sometimes sending him fifty or sixty miles over the mountains; and the records speak of him often as sleeping in the woods, pursued, shot at, and swimming his horse over rivers to escape his pursuers.' Those were heroic days indeed, and it is more than unkind to forget them.

The chapel which Father Williams occupied formed a part of the building which was until lately used as the Novitiate. For nearly forty years it was the only place of worship for the Catholics of Frederick county.

A familiar figure in American Church History enters at this point. The Rev. John Dubois, afterward Bishop of New York, went there from Emmetsburg as pastor about 1792, and with him at the same time appears another equally conspicuous man but in another sphere :

Roger Brooke Taney, the chief lawyer of Frederick, afterwards Jackson's Chief Justice of the United States whose famous Dred Scott decision is said to have precipitated the Civil War. In the yard of the Novitiate this great jurist was buried, and next to him was his mother, Monica Brooke Taney. Now that these graves are removed, it is to be hoped that a fitting monument may be erected in his honor who be it said in passing, besides winning distinction in the world was a practical and devoted Catholic.

It was Father Dubois who attempted to build the first church, and although it was an insignificant affair of brick, eighty-two feet long, the people thought him mad and even Taney concurred in the general verdict, and was of the opinion that "money could never be raised for such a building; that it could never be completed, and if completed could never be filled with Catholics." Taney, great lawyer though he was, was not a prophet, and Father Dubois had not lost his head; but for all that he built a poor enough church which, soon threatened to tumble down on the worshippers.

In 1811 Father Malevé, a Jesuit from Russia, where the Society of Jesus had continued all through the time of the general suppression, came to take the place of Father Dubois; and in the record of his labors in Frederick and in what is called the Manor, seven miles distant from the town, we meet with some interesting names on the list of those who helped him. The Carrolls were there of course; and so were the Pattersons of the Bonaparte connection; the Harpers; the Mac Tavishes; and there is recorded a considerable gift from "Mary Ann Marchioness of Wellesley," the Vice-Reine of Ireland who was grand-daughter of the great Carroll, and the daughter-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, "the daughter" as some one said, reigned in the land from which her fathers had been fugitives." Eleven years of labor in Frederick filled the measure of Father Maleve's good works; and when he died he was succeeded by the famous Father McElroy; the great priest of venerable and majestic appearance, who was known everywhere for his apostolic zeal-a hundred miles ride on horseback to help the dying being a trifle for him in those days-and who, in 1848, twenty-four years afterwards when war broke out with Mexico, was sent as chaplain to the United States troops so as to convince the Mexicans that the war was not

against their religion.

'who

Father McElroy was then sixty-five years of

age. His companion, Father Rey, was killed at Monterey.

In our days of palatial educational institutions it is amusing to read