“From the Archives” — Reverend John Thayer (1755-1815)
Saint Mary Church was founded in 1795, thanks in large part to Father John Thayer, an itinerant missionary whom Baltimore Bishop John Carroll assigned to serve Catholics in Alexandria. Thayer offered Mass for local Catholics, probably in the home of Col. John Fitzgerald, former aide-de-camp to General George Washington. Mass-goers likely questioned him about why the town was still without its own Catholic church after repeatedly petitioning Carroll for permission.
Father Thayer stayed at Notley Hall, in Oxon Hill, overlooking today’s Wilson Bridge and National Harbor, home of the Rozier family, devout Catholics. While there, he composed a letter to Carroll, describing the situation. This time Alexandria’s Catholics got permission for a church.
Father Thayer was a former prominent Congregationalist minister from Boston and chaplain in the Continental Army under John Hancock. He converted to Catholicism while visiting Rome in 1783. After studying with the Sulpicians in Paris, he was ordained in 1789, the first New Englander to be ordained a priest. This news shocked his former colleagues, including Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster, who scoffed at his conversion.
Returning to Boston, he started a small parish there and then he left for the mission in Maryland and Virginia. Because of his austere Northern temperament, he was not very successful with Virginia’s more Southern Catholics. By 1795, he had moved on to the Catholic settlements in Kentucky, where he gained notoriety for preaching passionately against slavery. In 1803, he returned to Europe and settled in Limerick, Ireland. He taught, was a noted preacher and rather popular confessor and writer. The family he boarded with in Ireland had a daughter who entered the Ursuline order, whom Father Thayer encouraged to emigrate to Charlestown, Massachusetts. After his death in 1815, his estate was used to establish a convent there, the first convent in New England. Unfortunately, a mob of anti-Catholic Nativists burned it to the ground in 1834.
— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian
In 2020, to commemorate the 225th anniversary of our parish, we started “From the Archives” as a weekly feature online and in our bulletin to spotlight the history of Saint Mary’s. Due to its popularity, we are continuing the series in 2022. An archive of the features is located here.