Tag: Mount St. Mary's University (Emmitsburg MD)

Wikipedia says: Mount Saint Mary’s was founded by French émigré Father John DuBois. In 1805, Father DuBois bought land near Emmitsburg, Maryland on the mountain that Catholic colonists had christened “St. Mary’s Mountain,” and laid the cornerstone for Saint-Mary’s-on-the-Hill church. Parishioners from two local congregations built a one-story, two room log cabin for Father DuBois, and that cabin was the first structure of Mount Saint Mary’s. The church was completed in 1807. Father DuBois first opened a boarding school for children. Then, in 1808, the Society of St. Sulpice closed Pigeon Hill, its preparatory seminary in Pennsylvania, and transferred all the seminarians to Emmitsburg. This marked the official beginning of Mount St. Mary’s. Father DuBois was appointed president of the college. Father Simon Bruté, whom President John P. Quincy Adams called “the most learned man of his day in America,” joined Mount St. Mary’s as teacher and vice-president in 1812. The small faculty of Mount St. Mary’s strove to offer a full high school and college course to lay students and potential priests and developed Mount St. Mary’s into “one of the most important ecclesiastical institutions of the country.” DuBois Hall, named for Father DuBois, was completed in 1826 in what had been a swampy thicket on the mountain. The first charter for a university was obtained in 1830. Until the early 1900s, Mount St. Mary’s also acted as a boarding school. Some remnants of the boarding school, such as Bradley Hall (one of the oldest buildings on campus), still exist. The Mount was known as Mount Saint Mary’s College and Seminary until June 7, 2004, when the name was changed to Mount Saint Mary’s University.

Saint Joseph College History and Merger with Mount Saint Mary’s

Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity and the first native born United States citizen to be canonized as a saint, came to Emmitsburg in 1809. She lived on the campus of Mount St. Mary’s while her own school was being built. For a while, she lived in the same log cabin that had been built for Father DuBois. In June 1809, Mother Seton established Saint Joseph’s Academy and Free School for girls, the first free Catholic parochial school in the United States. This school is considered to be the foundation of the entire Catholic parochial school system in the United States. Mother Seton wrote classroom textbooks and trained her Catholic sisters to become teachers, and accepted all students regardless of ability to pay.