The Negro in Calvert Land
Downing, Margaret B.
490 THE COMMONWEAL September 29, 1926 THE NEGRO IN CALVERT LAND By...
...We are all, tower of strength to the project...
...Over as a whole whilst performing its excellent labors for this now peaceful highway came the many recruits the Negro...
...There have been chil- of the Sacred Heart, Baltimore...
...Sailing farther, potentially worthy of the idealists who founded the "Governor Calvert and his twenty gentlemen of very "Land of the Sanctuary...
...Irish, Scotch, and Welsh...
...Mary's in 1634 than any now existing, the Dove, in 1634but he was recently transferred to another field...
...Archbishop of Baltimore, ex-officio president, the In- Mary's but the wheel of progress has begun to restitute has enrolled many names which in themselves volve and it gathers momentum...
...Rev- St...
...For St...
...A. C. alized their saleable qualities...
...Mary's County, and, by a happy its mouth, "and then," he writes, "we came nine or coincidence, not far from the place where Governor ten leagues lower to a lesser river on the north side, Calvert found the king of the Piscataways awaiting as bigge as the Thames, which we call St...
...Grain and tobacco fields, with an occarick Eugene Conroy of Saint Mary's Church at Bryan- sional farmhouse and a few scattered villages, now town...
...3, 1634, as the day the ships entered the Potomac at But there is in St...
...The curious fact should not be ignored that it was George MacDonald, ever a citizen of "the deeper a Victorian who introduced us to the immortal Alice, fairy-land of the soul," declared: and described the inhabitants of Looking-glass CounAll mirrors are magic mirrors...
...O'Connell of Boston and Cardinal Hayes of New and living...
...Mary's City...
...In the report of his journey and wilderness and waste, when with so little effort it of his safe arrival, sent by private hand to his brother could be transformed into a shrine of the most sacred Cecilius, second Baron of Baltimore, he gives March religious and historical memories...
...In about five years, if Mr...
...George's...
...Other members on this when Henry Ford and some of his business associates committee are Victor H. Daniel, principal of the In- obtained permission from Congress to build a bridge stitute, a graduate of Tuskegee and a former admin- sixty miles below Washington, spanning the Potomac istrative officer, also of St...
...or If a childish memory of Moxon's illustrated edition the sense of wonder disappears altogether-just be- of the Early Poems can be trusted, it was D. G. Roscause a mirror meets the surface needs of human setti's drawing of that tragic figure, in a low chamber nature so exactly...
...Mary's, the first perRiver...
...Such a regimen cannot fail to promote York have showed a generous interest in the cause, the general prosperity of the nation and, in the superand Archbishop Curley of Baltimore has proved a lative sense, that of St...
...Marie's in Maryland," but tion of Virginia's antiquities...
...To these may be dren's days and old St...
...Cardinal result from teaching intelligent methods in daily work...
...Mary's County begins after a most entrancing erend James Brent Matthews, S.J., pastor of the ride of two hours through country filled with glorious Church of Saint Ignatius at Bel Alton...
...She is his voice reached her, did she leave her loom to look entranced by the nearest representation of her mys- down to the Camelot of reality: terious individuality-and all but tangible self which still remains separate and aloof...
...Mary's still Monaghan of Washington, D. C., is secretary, and boasts its natural beauty, its delightful bracing climate Lawrence P. Williams is treasurer...
...The emiMarch 25, 1634, the Ark and the Dove came to nent prelate for whom this foundation is named, took anchor, and the prosecuted religion of Christ found a kindly interest in its welfare but he was called to its first home in the British colonies of the new world, rest before the project had assumed a definite shape...
...which has been aptly described as "this self-conscious The mirror crack'd from side to side...
...Joseph's college, Alabama, at the Indian ferry in Charles County, Maryland, and and of the New Jersey State School for Negroes at at Barnesfield in King George County, Virginia...
...The commonest room try...
...Since material prosperity incountry, swashbucklers prowled over the land, crossing variably awakens the ancestral pride, seemingly dorat the ferry and laying waste the homes and plan- mant many years in St...
...and will not only shorten the distance for motorists on the Eugene A. Clark, principal of the Miner Normal Maryland side who wish to cross to Virginia and for School, Washington, D. C. those coming from the Old Dominion into Lord BalSt...
...The every-day miracle of reflection is The Lady of Shalott...
...Completed and opened dominant when the signers of the Declaration affixed for students in October, 1924, the Institute is now a their names to the charter of civil liberty-English, memorial to Maryland's great churchman...
...Caroline L. Cook of Baltimore...
...Governor Leonard Calvert wrote a more voluminous At St...
...accounted for in terms of "pure secular science...
...Farming machinery has been col- The Cardinal Gibbons Institute in its first term justilected but meagerly, since funds are not yet available...
...Weekly papers of the region may hang his head...
...Mary's near the venerable city of St...
...Yet, with reluctance, it must Boys and girls of fourteen years and upward, of be acknowledged that no county in what was included good character, are eligible for the Institute if they in the original thirteen states, nucleus of the Union, have finished the sixth-grade work of any recognized has been so backward, and few counties in the entire school...
...Good methods of raising poultry and witness the pride of Virginia in all that concerns have been introduced to the community and the best her beginnings, is another reason why the Catholic dairy lore is taught...
...MIRRORS AND SOME REFLECTIONS By MURIEL KENT A 1 KIND of fascination is attached to the very but in the epilogue, he thus amended the suggestion word-the mireor of old French, and connected in its Latin form with mirari-to con- O whisper to your glass, and say template, wonder at...
...the soil to fertility...
...wholly on their shoulders, but to judge from results A high note of encouragement was recently sounded they are carrying it capably...
...Again, it was one of the great romanticists of the Elsewhere in Phantastes, he says that "a wondrous nineteenth century who wrote of the doomed Lady affinity exists between a mirror and a man's imagina- of Shalott, living always in a world of shadows tion !" Perhaps that is why a child, or a young girl, formed by her "mirror's magic sights," and reproducwill sometimes look at her reflected image with the ing them in the web she wove unceasingly...
...In what- Lewis Carroll's whimsical genius...
...planet," the fresh, questioning regard of youth is lost "The curse is come upon me" cried all too soon...
...Ford ing as chaplain...
...A shallow moralist may covered some of the lurking secrets of a mirror, as explain the longing as a supreme instance of human they studied their subjects by its means...
...Reverend Pat- memories...
...Narcissus gazed so constantly at his own beauty mir- It may be that the old masters, and the modern rored in the clear fountain that he pined and died of artists who have painted their own portraits, redislove for that phantom self...
...When it is considered how sacredly de- there are extensions into stock-raising and housekeepscendants of the pilgrims landing from the Mayflower, ing and these with the regular junior high-school have preserved every shred of evidence relating to courses...
...Father La Farge had been assistant keeps his contract with Congress and the War Departpastor of Saint Michael's Church, at Ridge, a mission ment, tourists may motor through the earliest settlewhich is geographically closer to the first church estab- ments of the pilgrims who landed from the Ark and lished at St...
...For the past three are a hostage of success...
...490 THE COMMONWEAL September 29, 1926 THE NEGRO IN CALVERT LAND By MARGARET B. DOWNING SEVEN years and a few months must elapse be- walls of its first assembly hall are plainly marked, a fore the Catholic Church of the United States portion still standing holds a mural tablet naming will solemnly commemorate the tri-centenary of those of the East Indian Company and of the Comthe landing of the pilgrims from the Ark and the mon council who may be deemed the fathers of the Dove on the soil of Maryland...
...During the Puritan regime in the mother Faith in the new world...
...Mary's County...
...Mary's, the Cardinal Gibbons tations in both the counties where Catholic history in Institute has wrought a good work for the community the United States had its opening chapters...
...Gifts have come from the Knights of Columbus who Sound philosophy underlies its dedication to three collected $35,000 by a five-cent national assessment...
...which are so familiar on the literature circulated by St...
...Catholics they are to a large extent, logically United States can reach its record for impoverished in such environment, but other denominations are not soil, for crude methods of agriculture, for indifferent debarred...
...Raising of the fine porcine breeds and literature, the attitude of Catholics toward St...
...Jamestown, in the municipal sense, have notices of health-promoting weeks, of doctors is quite as obliterated as St...
...In the myth beloved by poets, "What wonder if he thinks me fair...
...for there is no fantasy can replace those beloved figures with their cheating in nature and the simple . . . feelings of the soul.inverted wisdom...
...There is Rev- he spent his youth and from which he went forth to erend John A. La Farge, S.J., son of the painter fulfil his destiny, with Mount Vernon where he rests of the South seas, John La Farge, who has been act- in his last home...
...This Bordentown...
...To visit Jamestown Ridge to La Plata...
...Go, look in any glass and say In the prologue to Hans Andersen's charming story, What moral is in being fair...
...It has been traditional colony, while statues of every hero connected with to quote Father Andrew White's Relatio Itineris on Virginia's foundation fill the surrounding park, methe details of the voyage and the landing near what ticulously kept in order by the society for the preservabecame "ye citie of St...
...Mary's and adjacent counties are well repre- timore's country, by sixty miles, but connects the series sented in the spiritual way on this board of trustees, of Washington shrines on the Potomac, Wakefield, with the Auxiliary Bishop of Baltimore, Right Rev- where the patriot was born, and Fredericksburg, where erend Owen B. Corrigan, in the lead...
...Mary's is beginning to learn added such national guarantors of worthy endeavor what happens in big cities when a health drive is under as Senator Joseph E. Ransdell of Louisiana, former way...
...Yet the who have organized campaigns over the county to inSeptember 29, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 491 augurate better sanitation...
...Mary's County, Maryland, has the most glori- the Institute, "The duty of every man is to lighten ous traditions in all the United States for those of its the burden that falls heavily on his neighbor and to Catholic citizens who come of the races which were the full extent of his power...
...The Snow Queen, the arch-fiend made, for his own...
...There, on the feast of the Annunciation, manent settlement of Catholic Maryland...
...services, the spiritual needs of the Negro youth, the Bishop Hugh C. Boyle of Pittsburgh and Honorable general health and living conditions of its constituJames A. Houlahan, the county commissioner of ents, and the material welfare of the race which must Alleghany, inspired a special collection...
...But best of all, a ma- links in a chain" and the example of those who have jor portion of the money was collected by the Catholic founded the Institute for the well-being of the Negro Negroes of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New have influenced the white farmers and their families York, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Atlantic City...
...Reforms a self-perpetuating board of management with the come slowly in a conservative community like old St...
...Mary's City and destroyed its lic manor owners, the Fenwicks, Sewalls, Hills, records, plundered the homes of its citizens and took Neales, Lancasters, and many others whose names the pioneer shepherd, Father Andrew White, in chains stand gloriously in the annals of the defenders of the to London...
...The farm of the Institute was in wretched con- Senator David Ignatius Walsh of Massachusetts, and dition when purchased and an object lesson of far- many others associated in the public mind with effireaching value has been for the students to restore cient labors for religion and humanity...
...Admiral William S. Benson years land values have increased and during this last is the first vice-president, and William A. Aumen of summer owners of tracts on the salt water have reBaltimore has been named as the second...
...Mary's City, on the other hand, in spite of report which may be read in full text in the archives some monuments and markers, the Catholic stronghold of the palatinate of the Barons of Baltimore in the and first political capital of the province remains a British Museum...
...Monsignor James Rodger Matthews, pastor of skirt the road over which, in 1644, the hordes of Saint Cyprian's in Washington, D. C., and Reverend William Claibourne and Richard Ingle tramped in Louis B. Pastorelli, superior of Saint Joseph's Society their sudden descent on Lord Baltimore's province, 492 THE COMMONWEAL September 29, 192 when they burned St...
...At stated times there are farmers' conferthis exploit, what dignity marks their monuments, and ences, seasonal meetings-before planting the crop what wealth has been expended in statuary, pictures and after reaping it...
...But in a world Out flew the web and floated wide...
...Mary's City, ably defended by celebration of the tri-centenary of the beginnings of William Digges, lord of Warburton, and other Catho- the Catholic Church in the United States...
...fied the title of a national school in that applicants The Institute has property valued at $125,ooo, and were registered from fourteen states, and this distributhere is a small indebtedness on the main building...
...Practical farming is the main theme but sanitation...
...These officers act for two-thirds of the year and the possibilities of its as an executive committee with Admiral Benson as land-locked harbors and of the islands lying on the chairman...
...together with religious toleration and the broad char- He had, however, given a clarion call in the words ity dictated by the Saviour-"Love ye one another...
...The Cardinal Gibbons Ingood fashion" and the artisans, mechanics, and labor- stitute for Colored Youth is an agricultural school ers to the number of 250 who had accompanied the situated on a Zoo-acre tract on an inlet of the Potomac expedition, came to the high land above St...
...Only when intentness of Narcissus, and quite apart from the con- Sir Lancelot, on his charger, was reflected there, and sideration of her own features or coloring...
...It would be vanity...
...In A Day Dream, Tennyson bade paneled with glass, which enthralled the imagination, his lady equally with the poem, in those days...
...The poet knows that the alluring power of worth while to know the reflections of Rembrandt and reflection is a more subtle thing, and finds in the story Holbein on their reflections-or to hear what G. F. of Narcissus a type of the subjective mind-or of the Watts the mystic had to say to Watts the man, face to Greek spirit itself-in ardent Search for truth and face in his studio ! beauty...
...In the local aspect, at least, though perhaps from Virginia to the Protestant army which beseiged unawares, preparations go forward for the grand and captured St...
...has been stimulated by distributing the stock from Mary's County is inexplicable...
...his debarkation, a monument, though not in the sense The first landing of the pilgrims took place near that Plymouth, Jamestown, and the city of William what is now the small town of Ridge and the exact Penn have erected such, but one which is at least spot is locally called Sparrow's Point...
...tion has been doubled in the session now under way...
...Even in these superior days, no one disparages is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...
...Most of us respond ever way it may be accounted for, of one thing we may to its appeal with the old eagerness, for no modern be sure, that this feeling is no cheat...
...The burden of responsibility rests almost blue waters of river and bay...
...Under in the most subtle and encouraging way...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 21
