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Monday, October 12, 2015

The White House



The White House has a fascinating history. The main building was burned by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812. Afterward, when the building was being restored, the smoke-stained gray stone walls were painted white. The name “White House,” however, was not used officially until President Theodore Roosevelt had it engraved on his stationery in 1901. Prior to that, the building was known variously as the “President's Palace,” the “President's House,” and the “Executive Mansion.”

The Capital of Amerigo, the District of Columbia is named after another Catholic Explorer Christopher Columbus. And the White House is named after a Jesuit Andrew White. Then Daniel Carroll (Catholic) gives the land for our National Capital. Then after 26 years of Jesuit education John Carroll (Catholic) founded Georgetown University in 1789 the same year we became a country. 


Andrew White (1579 – December 27, 1656) was an English Jesuit missionary who was involved in the founding of the Maryland colony.[1] He was a chronicler of the early colony, and his writings are a primary source on the land, the Native Americans of the area, and the Jesuit mission in North America. For his efforts in converting and educating the native population, he is frequently referred to as the "Apostle of Maryland." He is considered a forefather of Georgetown University, and is memorialized in the name of its White-Gravenor building, a central location of offices and classrooms on the university's campus.[2] 

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George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, whom White is credited in helping to turn to Catholicism in 1625, wrote to White from his colony on the Avalon Peninsula inNewfoundland after 1628. White's further interest in America is shown a letter from Superior General Mutio Vitelleschi in a letter dated March 3, 1629, approving a mission to America. Though George Calvert died in 1632, his son, Leonard Calvert, second Baron Baltimore, continued the colonization program. Baltimore had wanted White to help found a new colony in the Chesapeake Bay which had been chartered June 20, 1632. White himself wrote of the benefits of converting the native population, and in a document dated February 10, 1633, he specifically advocates Catholic settlement in "lord Baltimore's Plantation in Mary-land." He describes to potential financiers a paradisaical land with majestic forests and fruitful soil, advertising 2,000 acres (8 km2) of land for each potential settler.

Apostle of Maryland


Prayers written by White between 1634 and 1640 in English, Latin, and Piscataway

On November 22, 1633, he took Baltimore's offer and set sail from Cowes on the Isle of Wight with lord Leonard Calvert and fellow Jesuits John Altham Gravenor and Thomas Gervase on The Ark, one of George Calvert's ships.[4] Their landing on March 25, 1634, on St. Clement's Island marks the birth of the Maryland colony. The anniversary of this date is now celebrated as Maryland Day. In saying Catholic Mass that day, he became the first priest to do so in the original thirteen English colonies.[5] By July of that year, White had written his first discussion on the new colony, titled A Relation of the Sucessefull Beginnings of the Lord Baltimore's Plantation in Maryland. Sections of this were used to further advertise the colony.

White spent most of the next decade in St. Mary's City, working on English-Native American relations, particularly with the Yaocomico tribe, which consistently saw favorable trade treaties from Calvert because of White, and the Anacostans. In 1637 they were joined by Jesuits Thomas Copley and Ferdinand Poulton, and between 1634 and 1650 there averaged four permanent Jesuits in the Maryland Colony.[6] To further his missionary work, he wrote dictionaries and translated the catechism into the native languages. On July 5, 1640, he famously converted Chitomachon, the chief of the Piscataway Indians, to Christianity. The chief was baptized as Charles. He later baptized a princess of the Patuxent Indians, and much of her tribe.
In 1933, the architect and writer Christopher La Farge designed a monument to White that is located just outside St. Mary's City.[7] 


Return to England

The English Civil War was to cut short his missionary work. In 1644, Richard Ingle and Puritan colonists from the neighboring Virginian colony of Jamestown, which had previously rebuffed George Calvert's visit, first raided St. Mary's City. Ingle succeeded in burning the town and, with the aid of William Claiborne, in controlling the Maryland Colony. White was again arrested for his Catholic preaching, and in 1645 he was sent with Thomas Copley in chains to London. Once there, he was tried for the crime of returning to England after being banished in 1606, which carried the punishment of death. He escaped this fate by arguing that his return was not of his own will. His petitions to return to Maryland denied, he spent the last decade of his life quietly in England until his death on December 27, 1656.


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