The Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary Under the Title of the Immaculate Conception

The Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary Under the Title of the Immaculate Conception. (Saint Mary’s Church). Church and surrounding buildings are on land once owned by Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737 – 1832) only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and last signer to die. At rear is Carroll Manor, built c.1730, his birthplace where he was married, lived during the Revolution and entertained George Washington. In it Catholics were welcome at frequent Mass in Carroll family chapel for decades when Maryland law forbade public Catholic worship., About 1825 Carroll had a small mission church built on site of present old school. His granddaughters in 1853 conveyed the property to the Redemptorists, who opened a Novitiate in the house and founded St. Mary’s Parish. St. John Nepomucene Neumann (1811 – 1860) blessed cornerstone and original bell of current church, May 13, 1858. Adjoining Monastery, begun 1859, was long a major Redemptorist training center and base for extensive missionary work in eastern United States and Canada. Pastor here during the Civil War was Father Francis Xavier Seelos (1819 – 1867), whose cause for Canonization was introduced 1903. , Shrine in church honors one of three first copies of the Venerated in 1906 icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to come to America (1868)., In 1906 Charles Adams Zimmerman (1861 – 1916), while longtime Naval Academy Bandmaster and St. Mary’s organist, composed the Navy’s “Anchors Aweigh”, whose refrain opens echoing the melody of the ancient Latin Marian Hymn, “Salve Regina”.