Jesuit settlers from England had founded the…
November 1791 CE
However, the 1646 defeat of the Royalists in the English Civil War had led to stringent laws against Roman Catholic education and the extradition of known Jesuits from the colony, including missionary Andrew White, and the destruction of their school at Calverton Manor.
During most of the remainder of Maryland's colonial period, Jesuits had conducted Catholic schools clandestinely.
It is not until after the end of the American Revolution that plans to establish a permanent Catholic institution for education in the United States are realized.
On Benjamin Franklin's recommendation, Pope Pius VI had appointed former Jesuit John Carroll as the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, even though the papal suppression of the Jesuit order was still in effect.
Carroll began meetings of local clergy in 1783 near Annapolis, Maryland, where they orchestrated the development of a new university.
On January 23, 1789, Carroll had finalized the purchase of the property in Georgetown, Maryland (today part of Washington, D.C.) on which Dahlgren Quadrangle will later be built.
Future Congressman William Gaston is enrolled as the school's first student on November 22, 1791, and instruction will begin on January 2, 1792.