Georgetown University: A Documentary History

The first edition of Maffei's life of Ignatius, which remained the standard biography of the Society's founder for many years. The frontispiece portrait of Loyola is taken from the copy of the anonymous Vita beati P. Ignatii Loiolae Societatis Iesv Fvndatoris (Rome, 1622), a biography rendered in eighty engravings, bound second in this volume. With the signature of Archbishop John Carroll on the first title page.

The first published edition of the Ratio, incorporating numerous changes from the private edition of 1586; this edition, however, was also superseded upon publication of that of 1599. One of two copies recorded in the United States. From the collection of Sir Leicester Harmsworth, with the earlier book label of Henry Huth.

The second and last of Tanner's great biographical compendia. The illustration displayed depicts the baptism of the Tayac by Father Andrew White. We do not know why his name was rendered as "Vitus."

Father Andrew White's copy of the rules of the Society of Jesus.

Mr. Wayt's Account - Note the details

The Jesuits established their second Maryland school at Bohemia Manor on the Eastern Shore at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. John Carroll entered in 1745 to prepare for the Jesuit College at St. Omer in Flanders. The opening displayed shows the account of Mr. Wayt, the schoolmaster. Wayt was a layman and a convert; he may have been put in charge of the school to help circumvent the legal prohibitions against Roman Catholic education.

The lower house of the Maryland assembly increased its attacks on Catholics after 1750. Charles Carroll, the father of the Signer, led the Catholic effort to block discriminatory legislation in the 1750's. We find Carroll's comments in this list: "Oh, the sagacious, merry and witty Govr! who ordered his clerk to write to me...to oppose a law which passed the House the day (he) wrote his letter."

Not all favored the establishment of a school. In this reply the proponents argue: "The schools of the Society in Europe were not calculated merely to supply its order with members, or the Church with ministers, but to diffuse knowledge, promote virtue & serve Religion. This is just the end we propose by our school, & tho' no members should take to the Church, we conceive this end alone well worth our most earnest concurrence, since it is the object of our dayly labours & the establishment of this Mission."

The original building stood on the south side of the quadrangle. It was demolished for the construction of the Ryan dormitory in 1904.

View of the site of the consecration of John Carroll as first Bishop of Baltimore and residence of Rev. Charles Plowden. The correspondence of Carroll and Plowden is one of the chief sources for the history of Anglo-American Catholicism in the period.

"Being out of Meat and finding none in our Great City, if it shd be convenient to you to kill a Calf, College will take what you can spare and with cr. for the same." This is the earliest letter we have by a Georgetown president written while in office.

The first illustrated prospectus

The first illustrated prospectus, along with the most recent. Old North, which still stands, joined the original building in 1795. Note the large handball alley.

Albumen photograph of a painting [after J.P. de Clorivière?]

Engraving [after J.P. de Clorivière?]

"All particular associations and private conversations are absolutely forbidden; no two or three therefore must be seen habitually conversing together for any considerable time in private."

The rules of 1829 were considered much more lenient than those of the Neale administration.

"Justane in a/c with the College"

Old Georgetown hands are surprised to learn that there were women at the college in the earliest days. Justane Douat was hired as a nurse for the small boys. Note the entry to cash paid for the seal of the corporation. We believe that she was giving money to engrave the emblem displayed here. Sukey was one of a small number of slaves who worked at the college along with free blacks.

William Gaston of North Carolina entered Georgetown November 22, 1791, as the first student to enroll. Though health forced his transfer to Princeton, where he was placed in the third year of studies after a year and a half at Georgetown, Gaston remained close to the faculty throughout his long and distinguished life. He served in Congress, where he introduced the legislation chartering the college, and served as chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. He wrote the state song of North Carolina and the city of Gastonia is named in his honor.

Gaston married the daughter of the college physician in the parlor of the Worthington house, now the home of Senator and Mrs. Claiborne Pell. Fr. Grassi officiated at the ceremony.

"Mr. Gaston presented a petition of the President and Directors of the College of Georgetown, praying to be invested with authority and power to confer the usual academical honors..."

The charter gave Georgetown the power to grant degrees. The first to complete the course were brothers Charles and George Dinnies of New York.

A research paper for the panel on historical perspectives on the public interest in higher education. Association for the study of higher education.

There were at least three serious student rebellions at Georgetown before the Civil War. The most celebrated occurred just after the Christmas holiday of 1849. The story is best told in the words of Judge Robert Ray, who wrote about it almost fifty years later:

"I was in the "Ky Yi Yi" Rebellion, Father Ward was vice President, in the absence of Ryder the rebellion broke out, on account of the grub mostly as I recollect, after the matter went on for some days, we all in a body waited on Father Ward for the purpose of making known our grievances, and he as 'quict as tow and fire' wanted to know who was at the head of all this. Dominick O'Burnes of Ga spoke up and said we are all acting in concert, where upon a brake was made for the dormitory where we procured what clothes was on hand, and after smashing up things in general, about sixty of us left the College and went over to Washington, and took charge of the Globe Hotel, a third class house, & called to our aid several Senators, and Representatives from the states the boys were from, and asked them after laying our case before them, to open communication with the faculty...That was the first rebellion I was ever in, the second was the one between the North and the South, and I must say that I came out worse for the wear in both of them."

---Robert Ray to Rev. Francis Barnum, S.J.

Chromolithograph

Bound with lithographic copies of each published by Matthew F. Maury at the Naval Observatory, Washington.

The Civil War

Reduced copy from the original in the University Archives

Engraving

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James, Patrick, Sherwood, and Michael Healy were four remarkable sons from a family of ten children born to Michael Morris and Mary Eliza Healy of Jones County, Georgia. Their birthdates were April 6, 1830, February 27, 1834, January 24, 1836, and September 1839, respectively. Michael Healy, the father, was an Irish immigrant who came to America by way of Canada. Successful in land lotteries held in Georgia after the War of 1812, Mr. Healy was able to turn his good fortune into a prosperous cotton plantation on the banks of the Ocmulgee River near Macon, Georgia. Mary Eliza had been a mulatto domestic slave on the plantation of cotton magnate Sam Griswold until Mr. Healy purchased her in 1829. Deeply devoted to her, Michael Healy took Eliza as his wife, despite the fact that the marriage was technically against the laws of Georgia and that any offspring would be classified legally as slaves.

Considered property by law, Healy's sons were barred from schools in Georgia. Unable to educate his sons properly at home, the family determined to send them North for schooling. Mr. Healy's attempt to escape the stifling Georgia Black Codes was hampered by the shocking amount of bigotry and prejudice displayed to him by Northern school officials. After an exhausting search, he located a Quaker school in Flushing, Long Island, willing to accept his three eldest sons.

The educational paths of all four boys eventually converged on the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester, Massachusetts. Here James, Patrick, and Sherwood fully embraced the Catholic faith of their father, who had fallen out of practice because of the lack of Catholics and churches in Georgia at the time of his settlement. These three would later pursue priestly vocations which would stimulate and illustrate their talents for service, compassion, and learning. James would become the first black bishop in the American Catholic Church; Patrick would serve as president and rector of Georgetown University; Sherwood became director of the seminary in Troy, New York, and rector of the Cathedral in Boston. The future Captain Healy was baptized at Holy Cross like his brothers, but would undertake a career in the Revenue Cutter Service, a branch now part of the Coast Guard. Known as "Hell-Roaring Mike," he is still a legendary figure in Alaska and the Coast Guard.

Having been freed from the clutches of legal and overt prejudice by a father of devotion and foresight, the four Healy brothers would take advantage of their opportunities to become impor- tant figures in American history as well as the Black heritage of the United States.

-William M. Ferraro C '82

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[Ticket]

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Father Early served as president from 1858-1866, and 1870-1873.

[Ticket]

[Program]

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Georgetown began systematic fund raising in the late twenties, just in time for the depression.

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Thankfully, this proposed School of Foreign Service building remained a gleam in the eye of the architect [1952]

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Rev. Edmund Walsh, S.J., inspecting war-surplus buildings erected on 37th Street to hold the burgeoning post-war enrollments. This building first served as naval barracks at Solomon's Island, Maryland.

The Institute of Languages and Linguistics and the Business School were natural outgrowths of the Foreign Service School. The School of Languages Linguistics began separate operations in 1949; the Business School in 1955.

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The university as left by Rev. Edward Bunn, S.J.

The 175th Anniversary Celebrations: A Dress Rehearsal for the Bicentennial

[Poster]

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from the Provost's Newsletter

VHS video tape

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