Imposed and Home-Grown Colonial Institutions: The Jesuit Chapels of St. Mary’s City and St. Francis Xavier, Maryland

Summary

Through institutions, neighborhoods become communities. Religious, educational, governmental, and social organizations provide structured relationships. They express commonly held goals and values, and are endowed with varying degrees of authority and power. But institutions do not follow a common developmental trajectory. The discovery of the 1662 Jesuit chapel of St. Francis Xavier in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, plays an integral role in the examination of the most basic difference among Colonial American institutions: those imposed from without, as is the case of the Jesuit chapel in St. Mary’s City, and those home-grown institutions that drew their impetus from the settlers of a small circumscribed area 20 miles from the capital at St. Mary’s City. We examine the architecture and layout of these two sites, relating both to different aspects of the same institution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Institutions and Their Enduring Material Aftermaths   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-12,05