“From the Archives” Early Parish Ordinations to the Priesthood

On June 6, the Arlington Diocese will be blessed with the ordination of five new priests. Looking back over the early years of our own parish, we find a number of Saint Mary parishioners who became priests.

The earliest known Alexandrian to be ordained was Jackson John Richards. The son of Methodist parents, he was born in 1787. His mother had him baptized a Catholic at Saint Mary. However, his father planned for him to be a minister and he was tutored by a Presbyterian clergyman who taught him Latin and Greek. In 1807, the 20-year old Richards became an itinerant Methodist missionary and set out to convert Canada. In August of that year, he arrived at the Sulpician Seminary in Montreal, ambitiously intending to convert the priests. But things worked out differently. Three months later, he converted to Catholicism. From 1807 to 1809, he studied theology at the Montreal seminary. With permission from Baltimore Bishop John Carroll (Alexandria was part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore until 1858), Father Richards was ordained by the Archbishop of Montreal on July 25, 1813 at Notre-Dame Church.

After his ordination, Father Richards joined the Sulpicians and became a Canadian/British citizen. Most of his ministry was spent serving English-speaking Irish immigrants at Saint Patrick Church in Montreal.  In 1847, as many as 2,000 Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine poured into that city’s harbor each day. Sailing on filthy, cramped, disease-ridden ships, they brought typhus with them. In a short time, thousands had succumbed to the pestilence. Father Richards and three other priests began ministering to the victims in June; by July 8, the three assistants had died. Father Richards and several nursing sisters from the Grey Nuns continued to unceasingly tend the sick and dying. By late July, every one of the Grey Nuns fell ill and soon died. Father Richards caught the disease himself and died on July 23, 1847. The people of Montreal considered him a martyr and he is buried in Montreal’s Notre-Dame Church, now a basilica.

Saint Mary did not have another priestly ordination from among its parishioners until almost 40 years later – Father Robert Fulton, S.J. He was born in 1826 and spent his childhood in Alexandria. His father, James Robert Fulton II, was a diplomat who died while sailing to Europe in 1836. Young Fulton served as a U.S. Senate page and entered Georgetown College in 1842 when he was about 16. He entered the Jesuit order and was ordained in 1852. Father Fulton taught at Georgetown until he was called to help establish the new Jesuit Boston College in 1863. He served as president of the college and as Jesuit Provincial. He died in 1895 and is buried at Santa Clara Mission in California. His widowed mother, Mary Olympia O’Brien Fulton, entered the Visitation convent when her son entered the Jesuits. She later served as the Sister Superior of Georgetown Visitation Convent and is probably the first woman from Saint Mary to enter religious life.

Several other men associated with Saint Mary Church were ordained in the 1850s. Two of them, Father Oscar Sears and Father Robert H. Andrews, were converts who were ordained in the Diocese of Richmond.

Father John Antonius Rotchford, O.P., born in 1834, was part of two of Saint Mary’s earliest families. His father, Bartholomew Rotchford, came to Alexandria from Ireland in 1812; his mother, Janepher Carne, was a native of Wales. The Carne family was prominent in Alexandria for generations. Educated at Saint Joseph Seminary in Ohio, Father Rotchford was ordained in 1859 in Nashville, Tennessee. A scholar and noted preacher, he had a distinguished career in the Dominican order, mostly in the Midwest and Ontario, Canada. He died in 1896 in New York City and is buried in the Dominican section of Calvary Cemetery there.

– Kitty Guy, Parish Historian

Throughout 2020, the Basilica of Saint Mary will present “From the Archives.” It is a weekly feature online and in our bulletin spotlighting the history of the parish. All of our “From the Archives” features are located here.