The Jesuits owned Plantations in Maryland...

5fish

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I found this little tidbit about The Jesuits priest hood owning plantations and slaves which will lead to the founding of Georgetown University. The Plantations are still with us as shadows of themselves as parts of military bases and parks but many of the main building are still standing. The article is good it telling about the modern state of each plantation as of today...


snip...

Over the last several years, there have been many news stories about the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved persons by the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus and Georgetown University.

snip...

The Jesuits owned five large estates in Maryland totaling around 12,000 acres: St. Inigoes and Newtown Manor in St. Mary’s County; St. Thomas Manor in Charles County; White Marsh Manor in Prince George’s County; and Bohemia in Cecil County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. St. Inigoes and Newtown Manor contained around 3,000 acres. St. Thomas Manor, the largest, contained roughly 4,500 acres at its peak. White Marsh contained about 2,000 acres.

snip...

The oldest of the plantations was St. Inigoes in St Mary’s County. The original 2,000 acres of land had been given to the Jesuits by the Lords Baltimore in 1637, only three years after the founding of the colony of Maryland.

Here they track those 272 slave to Louisiana...

 

5fish

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The Jesuits had a Plantation in Louisiana...


The Jesuits were given a home in the heart of the French Quarter, but they soon outgrew this residence. Bienville had served as governor for three terms and was being called back to France. Before he departed, Bienville gave the Jesuit priests the land that was located two blocks upriver from the French Quarter. The so-called “Jesuit Plantation” covered what is now the Central Business District (CBD) of New Orleans, which includes the property we are standing on today. The Jesuit priests and brothers managed the land, on which they grew sugar, tobacco and oranges

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All the property possessed by the Fathers, except their personal belongings, was seized and sold at auction. The sacred plate and vestments of the chapel were given to the Capuchin friars. Every Jesuit was ordered back to France. Within ten years, the Jesuits had been suppressed throughout the world; at this time only Russia would allow the Jesuits to remain in their country.
 

5fish

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Here the Jesuits set up a College in Louisiana and enslaved labor was used, rented and sold...


snip... nuns had slaves....

Instead, the Jesuits deemed Grand Coteau, just south of Opelousas in St. Landry Parish, a more suitable location for a college. There, in 1837, they established St. Charles College. The Religious of the Sacred Heart, who had been in Grand Coteau since 1821, donated a thousand dollars to help get the college on its feet. They also supplied meals, lumber, and mortar, as well as brick made from clay on their own property, probably by their own enslaved people, at no cost to the Jesuits. When the Sisters of the Sacred Heart had established their convent in Grand Coteau, Mrs. Charles Smith gave them plantation land and some of the Smiths’ own enslaved people to farm the land and serve the sisters

snip...

The Religious of the Sacred Heart, who owned about 150 enslaved people in Louisiana and Missouri...
 

5fish

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Jesuits and slavery... about 5 paragraphs in get good...


snip...

The property had been acquired by the Jesuits in 1668. By the early 1800s, the Jesuits had bought or been given more than 300 enslaved people, who labored at several different plantations in eastern Maryland, according to Georgetown University historian Adam Rothman.
 

5fish

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Here is one of three catholic orders that owned slaves in Kentucky...


Here another orders History with slaves...


Here the orders apologize ...

 

jgoodguy

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Good information, but unremarkable in the time and place.
 

5fish

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Good information, but unremarkable in the time and place.
It shows how the church was enculturated by the local values they lived in. I read once about two sisters from the north came south married southern men and you could read in their letters whom the adopted the local values... It seems churches do as well...
 

jgoodguy

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It shows how the church was enculturated by the local values they lived in. I read once about two sisters from the north came south married southern men and you could read in their letters whom the adopted the local values... It seems churches do as well...
That is a human trait for survival.
 

5fish

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That is a human trait for survival.
Here is a good little article about the Jesuits Plantation Maryland... debated not the moral by the economics of slavery and the threat of abolitionist... and moving the mission to the cities...


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Before the sale, the mission drafted “Conditions for Sale,” a set of guidelines to protect their former slaves. They determined that the slaves could only be sold to a plantation, rather than families, “so that the purchasers may not separate them indiscriminately and sell them.” In what reads like a bill of rights, the slaves were promised to be kept with their families, and those with family on other plantations were to be sold to those plantations. Those who were too old or sick to be sold were to be provided for “as justice and charity demands.” Finally, the slaves were guaranteed the right to practice religion. The document also made a demand of the Maryland Jesuits, likely an addition from the new school of Jesuits. The sale’s profit was not to pay off debts or purchases, but “must be invested as Capital which fructifies,” specifically educational centers in New York and Philadelphia.
 
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