Farmer Priests: Capitalism, Slavery, and the Middle Atlantic Jesuit Mission

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Jesuit Missions, Plantations, and Industries" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Like French and Iberian Jesuits, English members of the Society of Jesus established plantations in North America to fund missions and educational institutions. It was "a fine poor man’s country," but the Society’s ten plantations never realized significant profits until the mid-nineteenth century. Evidence from St. Inigoes Plantation in Maryland and the Chapel farms at Conewago in Pennsylvania demonstrates changes in the landscape over time, and how the desire to turn a profit motivated agricultural decision-making, labor management, and the Jesuits’ fraught relationship with slavery. Furthermore, the analysis of religious artifacts from the region suggests that Jesuit missions to American Indians and African Americans in the Middle Atlantic persisted well into the nineteenth century. The Maryland Jesuits’ desire to earn profits and to participate in the social world of local elites were often at odds with the spiritual goals of the mission.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Jesuit Missions, Plantations, and Industries   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 380