St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland)

Beginning in 1704 the Society of Jesus bought a farm and initiated missionary activities on the site, thereby establishing a second mission in Maryland half a century after the foundation of the Newtown Manor mission in St. Mary's County, Maryland.{{Cite web |url=https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/NR_PDFs/NR-335.pdf |title=National Register of Historic Places Registration: St. Francis Xavier Church |date=December 1973 |access-date=2016-01-01 |last=Bourne |first=Michael |publisher=Maryland Historical Trust}}

A school here taught many distinguished early American Catholic leaders, including future archbishop John Carroll and his cousin, founding father Charles Carroll. Priests assigned to this mission evangelized in the Delmarva Peninsula, including the modern Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Diocese of Wilmington. Perhaps the most famous grave in the graveyard is of Catherine ("Kitty") Knight (1775–1855), credited for saving an elderly neighbor, a church and much of Georgetown, Maryland during the War of 1812, although her own house burned to the ground.{{Cite journal |title=Two Maryland Heroines |last=Love |first=William H. |journal=Maryland Historical Magazine |volume=3 |issue=2 |date=June 1908 |page=136 |url={{Google books |mfkMAAAAYAAJ |pg=PA135 |plainurl=yes}}}}

The most historic properties on the site are a brick church, constructed shortly after the American Revolutionary War and dedicated in 1797, and an early-19th-century brick rectory connected by a one-story hyphen. The church consists of a four-bay-deep by three-bay-wide brick structure, with a 3-story brick tower added on the southwest facade of the church subsequent to its original building in 1792. The rectory is a five-bay-long, {{frac|2|1|2}}-story brick building with a two-bay-long hyphen on one end and a two-bay-long kitchen on the other. Also on the property is a public graveyard, as well as a relatively modern barn and farmhouse. A fire gutted the church's interior in 1912, but the church was rebuilt within the old walls. Regular services discontinued in the 1920s, but resumed in modern times. The Old Bohemia Historical Society, begun by a Catholic, a Quaker and a Methodist in 1954, bought the property's core 120 acres and now maintains the site.Arnett, Earl; Brugger, Robert J.; and Edward C. Papenfuse. Maryland: A New Guide to the Old Line State (2nd ed.) The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999 p. 141.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/the_secret_mission_of_old_bohemia|title=The Secret Mission of Old Bohemia|date=30 November 2003 }}

The St. Francis Xavier Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

• Joseph C. Cann, History of Saint Francis Xavier Church and Bohemia Plantation, Now Known as Old Bohemia, Warwick, Maryland (Old Bohemia Historical Society, 1976)
• Mary DeVine Dunn, Lillian DeVine, St. Francis Xavier Church, Warwick, Maryland, "Old Bohemia": Its History, the Burial Register : Historical Notes (DeWitt Publishing, 1966)
• List of Jesuit sites

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• Bohemia 1704–2004: A History of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Shrine in Cecil County, Maryland. By Thomas J. Peterman. (The Bohemian Historical Society, Devon, Pennsylvania: William T. Cooke Publishing Co. 2004).

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• {{MHT url|id=337|title=St. Francis Xavier Church and Rectory, Cecil County}}, including undated photo, at Maryland Historical Trust
• [http://www.stdennischurch.org/OLDBOHEMIA.htm History of St. Francis Xavier Shrine, Old Bohemia, 1704–2004] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120621005637/http://www.stdennischurch.org/OLDBOHEMIA.htm |date=2012-06-21 }}, by Rev. Thomas J. Peterman; St. Dennis Church website
• {{HABS |survey=MD-241 |id=md0352 |title=St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church, Warwick & Church Roads, Warwick, Cecil County, MD |photos=12 |dwgs=7 |data=4}}

{{Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington}}

{{National Register of Historic Places in Maryland}}

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Category:Churches in Cecil County, Maryland

Category:Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington in Maryland

Category:Historic American Buildings Survey in Maryland

Category:Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Maryland

Category:Roman Catholic churches completed in 1792

Category:National Register of Historic Places in Cecil County, Maryland

Category:18th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States

Category:Society of Jesus in Maryland

Category:Brick buildings and structures in Maryland

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