“From the Archives” Saint James Mission

In 1873, Saint Mary’s Pastor Father Dennis O’Kane, SJ, established Saint James Church as a mission of Saint Mary, along the old Leesburg Pike (Route 7) in Falls Church. According to Saint James parish history, “the visiting priest would travel 13 miles over rolling hills on Sundays to celebrate Holy Mass.” Initially, only a few Catholics lived in the tiny village of Falls Church and the priest would visit once a month; then the area grew rapidly after the Civil War. Saint Mary’s priests would usually travel by horseback from Alexandria to Falls Church to minister to the people there.

Before a church structure was built in Falls Church, Father O’Kane offered Mass at the home of the Sewall family on West Street, near the present Saint James cemetery. In 1873, Mrs. Victoria Territt began a fund raising drive for a new church and raised $126 – worth a lot more than today! Construction began that same year after the Sewall family sold a plot of land to the bishop of Richmond, Bishop James Gibbons, for one dollar.

The first church (left) was a small, white clapboard frame building topped by an imposing 66-foot bell tower, surmounted by a cross. Saint James Cemetery is located on the site of this original church. The new church, “under the charge of the energetic Father O’Kane of Alexandria” (Georgetown Courier), was dedicated by Bishop Gibbons on October 18, 1874. A special train carried a large number of Catholics from Saint Mary and Georgetown to attend the event.

Saint Mary’s priests and parishioners continued to support the new parish. In 1876, Saint Mary parishioners travelled by stagecoach to Saint James for a strawberry festival and concert to raise money for an organ, with Saint Mary’s choir participating in the concert. By the time Saint James became a parish in 1892, 325 of the 1,000 people living in Falls Church were Catholic. Today Saint James has a lovely stone neo-Gothic church, built in 1902, and a large school.

– 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 2021. An archive of the features is located here.