From the Archives – Stories of The First Saint Mary Chapel

When Father Richard Carne, with the assistance of his brother, William Carne, both avid historians, wrote a short history of Saint Mary parish in the 1870s, they were able to interview some of the church’s earliest parishioners. Their history supplies details of the original chapel built in what is now the parish cemetery at 1000 South Royal Street.

One “venerable lady, whose life God had preserved” recalled attending Mass there in 1803. She described the interior. The confessional was “…a sort of box made of planks set upright in the corner, and the priest mounting to the top of it to preach.” There is no mention of how high the box/pulpit was or if there were stairs to climb to its top. It would have been awkward to climb while wearing Mass vestments. The same lady,
whose name Father Carne did not disclose, is the source of an often-told account about early altar boys. The sacred vessels used at Mass were kept in a parishioner’s home for safety, not left in the remote chapel. One day, a lady was walking down St. Asaph Street by the chapel and discovered the chalice, draped in a cloth, lying under a cherry tree. The altar boys, who had been entrusted with returning the chalice to its storage place after Mass, were in the tree eating ripe cherries!

The chapel was abandoned when property was purchased in 1810 to build a new church at Duke and Royal Streets. Although it was said to have never been completed, the exterior of the old chapel must have been finished because, according to Father Carne, “It stood in a dismantled conditioned until 1839, when after having been for years a hiding place for gamblers and other vicious characters, it was torn down.” The bricks were sold and used to erect the columns on the Alexandria Lyceum at Washington and Prince Streets.

— 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. An archive of the features is located here.