Washington Was Originally Named Rome, Maryland (Mary-Land)

Published February 11, 2014

Discover the unique history of Rome in Maryland and its influence on Washington D.C., from Francis Pope's estate to Tiber Creek's origins.

Washington’s Hidden Roman Legacy

Nestled in Washington D.C.‘s history is a surprising connection to a little-known place: Rome, in Maryland. This discovery offers a unique glimpse into America’s past.

Rome in America: A 17th Century Vision

In the 17th century, a vast estate of 400 acres existed southeast of what is now Georgetown, in Maryland. Owned by an Italian culture enthusiast, this land was ambitiously named Rome. The owner’s passion for Italy didn’t just influence the name; it shaped his vision for the New World. This estate was more than land; it was a symbol of aspiration and connection to ancient civilizations.

Transitioning from European inspiration to American reality, the landowner renamed Goose Creek to Tiber Creek. This act mirrored Rome’s iconic River Tiber, creating a symbolic link across continents. His vision was to merge the grandeur of ancient Rome with the budding potential of America.

Francis Pope: The Mastermind Behind Rome, Maryland

The visionary behind this American Rome was Francis Pope, who acquired the land on June 5th, 1663. His story, detailed in an October 7th, 1883 Washington Post article, reflects a blend of ambition and whimsy. Pope took pride in his estate, often boasting about his Rome on the Tiber. His unique naming scheme wasn’t just a personal quirk; it was a statement of cultural identity and historical awareness.

Francis Pope’s legacy extends beyond mere land ownership. He imbued his estate with a sense of historical and cultural significance. His choice to name the creek Tiber was a deliberate effort to echo the greatness of ancient Rome in the new American landscape.

Pope Francis' Body Language with Trump - Sunday law push by Vatican (Psy...

Video removed, again.

A Pope for the Poor

Will Francis' personal humility and focus on poverty help revive the church's fortunes on his home continent?





By Howard Chua-Eoan

Monday, July 29, 2013


 
STEFANO SPAZIANI


In the North of Rio de Janeiro is the miserable slum of Manguinhos. It is a stubborn place. Again and again the local government tries to evict the residents in urban cleansings that sweep into the favela with instruments of construction assigned to destruction. The demolitions have grown more desperate as Brazil prepares to play host to the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Bulldozers and jackhammers and backhoes shear off sides of buildings, revealing staircases that go nowhere. Exposed to the elements are the red, turquoise and yellow walls that were once living rooms. But many of the people refuse to move. They jerry-build electricity and water supplies to maintain themselves even as rivers of sewage run past the front of what they still call home. Under the rubble, the streets remain visible. They were named for saints.

In miserable Manguinhos is the even more miserable neighborhood called Varginha. Its tenacity has increased because the Pope is coming to visit. The last Pope to visit a Brazilian favela--John Paul II in 1980, on the first of several trips to the country--helped save it from a similar demolition plan simply by paying it attention. The authorities relented; the bulldozers went away. The people of Varginha are praying that Francis will perform the same miracle. On the front of one house, someone has painted in light blue, "The Pope is coming to Varginha to visit the poor. The poor will be very happy!"

They know that Francis is the Pope of the poor. Did he not name himself for the son of the rich man from Assisi who gave up everything to walk barely shod, a saint in sackcloth? Has not this new Pope refused to live in his palace? And did he not say that the shepherd of the faithful must smell like his sheep? The astonished whispers are everywhere, not just Brazil, before his first scheduled foreign trip since his election and his first return to his home continent. A Pope for the forgotten; a Pope for the godforsaken. And not just among Catholics: Anglicans are thinking of a compact of churches to fight poverty, and evangelicals see Francis as a Pontiff they can deal with. Atheists are gob-smacked that he has said some of them might merit heaven. A Pope for everyone?

Brazil may prove to be a showcase for the powers of this humble Pope and the fresh face he is putting on the ancient papacy. In this, the most populous of Catholic countries on the most Catholic of continents, he faces in microcosm the challenges the church is confronted with around the world: the magnetism of Protestant evangelism and the temptations of secular culture. And it is in this enormous Latin American nation that the Pope of the poor may just begin to have the destabilizing influence that John Paul II had in Eastern Europe: to turn the tide against the rivals of the church and re-establish its primacy in places where it once held incontestable sway. Already Brazil wonders if Francis might exacerbate the protests that swept its cities last month. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina is probably grateful that the Pontiff, whom she used to deride when he was a Cardinal, decided against visiting his native land as it prepares for a crucial round of elections.

A Gentle Cunning

 


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A Church Near The Capitol And How It Grew

Yet, more Rome, Mary-Land info thanks to a link from Dov of End of Days.


History

St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church was organized May 10, 1820. Some of the original members included Rev. William Matthews, Daniel Carroll of Duddington, William Brent, James Hoban, Nicholas L. Queen, James Scallan, Ed. Mattingly, James Spratt, and James Barry. The church building, erected in 1821, after being enlarged from time to time, was torn down in 1889. The present granite and marble building was erected on the site of the old church, at the corner of Second and C Streets SE; it was dedicated November 23, 1890.

A Church Near The Capitol And How It Grew

On seeing St. Peter’s Church so close to the United States Capitol, one naturally wonders if the two were ever part of a common piece of property. A look at the records assures that they were, and turns up two intriguing bits of history to set the stage for the story of St. Peter’s.

In May, 1664, the colonial Maryland land grant office issued a patent for a 400 acre tract covering the Capitol Hill area. It went to a whimsical gentleman called Francis Pope. He called his tract “Rome” and a stream at the foot of the hill the “Tiber.” Thus he could say that “Pope was at home at Rome by the Tiber.” Later many local residents, George Washington among them, thought the name Tiber was too pretentious and called it Goose Creek. But the name Tiber stuck, and the stream exists by that name today, underground (where it cost taxpayers millions as engineers struggled to divert it from the foundations of the Rayburn House Office Building).

In 1670 the ground on the top of the hill was acquired by a pioneer Catholic settler of Maryland, Thomas Notley. In honor of the ancient Benedictine foundation in Dorsetshire, England, his ancestral home, Notley named the property Cerne Abbey Manor.

Thus St. Peter’s found itself on a site named once for the seat of Catholicism and again for a place trod by storied medieval monks; all this in addition, of course, to being in the very cockpit of national history.

From another standpoint, St. Peter’s can now be seen as a “mother of churches” in the city of Washington. Within what was once the parish boundaries are located St. Dominic’s St. Joseph’s, St. Teresa’s, Holy Comforter, Church of the Assumption, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, St. Francis Xavier, and parts of St. Aloysius, St. Martin, and St. Francis de Sales.




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Is it Pope Francis or Francis Pope?

As I was researching for corroborating evidence that this article did once exist ROME, MARY-LAND  U.S.A., I found an article on what could be a name anagram - Pope Francis/Francis Pope (an insight that I had recently gained)  at a peculiar site, with a similar title as EndrTimes:

END OF DAYS

TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2013

Is it Pope Francis or Francis Pope?

It is a matter of now you see it and now you don't. Wikipedia is getting ready to delete its post on Rome, Maryland a.k.a. Washington DC. They can't take the "conspiracy theory" that Washington D.C. was at one time known as Washington D.C, I mean Rome, Maryland. Here is their post on Rome, Maryland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome,_Maryland.   Here is another article about Tiber Creek on Wikipedia where Francis Pope, who named the creek, the Tiber, is conveniently not mentioned in the article. Ah, but he is in the footnotes in this article. I am sure that that footnote will be "discussed for deletion" on Wikipedia in the near future. All those editors at Wiki, are busy busy covering up The Truth. Looking at the Obama Administration, he likely has at least 12 full time White House employees busy doing just the same (editors on websites where People of Interest have a 212 3B terrorist designation). More on that below.

Read more: http://yearsofawe.blogspot.com/2013/04/is-it-pope-francis-or-francis-pope.html

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Pope Francis or Francis Pope?   

I just got (undertood) the name game this afternoon!  How about that for synchronicity? Now I see it @ End of Days.

And by today 5/21/13, less than a month from when the above article warned that Wikipedia would delete the article about Rome, Maryland; Yes, it's gone!

Arsenio.

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ROME, MARY-LAND U.S.A.

Re-post of an article originally posted on EndrTimes (http://endrtimes.blogspot.com/2007/11/rome-usa.html) on 11/18/07.

(As of May 21, 2013 - This article has been inexplicably deleted, even though it was on the Web on Wikipedia back in 2007.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rome,_Maryland

Rome, Maryland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rome, Maryland, was the original name of a community within Prince George's County, Maryland, which would eventually become Washington, District of Columbia. Specifically, Rome was the original community name of Capitol Hill, upon which the United States Capitol Building sits.

In 1663, the property that would become the Capitol's site was inscribed in the Maryland property records as “Rome,” its owner a man named Francis Pope. The southern boundary of this property was shaped by a river named for the river that runs through Rome, Italy, the Tiber.

The community was part of the ten mile square tract of land which would become the American capital Washington, D.C., and its owner, Daniel Carroll, transferred the community to the federal government after the amendment to the United States Constitution sanctioning the building of the new United States capital city was ratified.

Daniel Carroll was the chairman of a three-man commission appointed by President George Washington to find a suitable location for the capital city. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Daniel Carroll was a Roman Catholic educated by Jesuits in Maryland and France. His brother John Carroll became the first Catholic bishop in America, presiding over the See of Baltimore, which included Washington, D.C. John Carroll also founded Georgetown University.

References

• Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C.
• The Catholic Encyclopedia, Charles G. Herbermann
• Rulers Of Evil: Useful Knowledge About Governing Bodies, F. Tupper Saussy, HarperCollins, 1999, 2001
• Ovason, David, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: the Masons and the building of Washington, D.C. New York City: Perennial, 2002. ISBN 0060195371 ISBN 978-0060195373

The Darkest Day: The Washington-Baltimore Campaign During the War of 1812, Charles Geoffrey Muller

See also

• Capitoline Hill (the original Capitol Hill in Rome, Italy)
  Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome%2C_Maryland"
  
  
  
  

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome,_Maryland

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(Still active as of May 21, 2013)

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Tiber Creek
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tiber/Goose Creek around 1800, and the modern shorelines of the Potomac River.


Andrew Ellicott's revision of L'Enfant's Plan, showing Washington City Canal

Tiber Creek or Tyber Creek was a tributary of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.

Originally called 'Goose Creek', it was renamed by settler Francis Pope. Pope owned a 400-acre (1.6 km2) farmstead along the banks of the creek which, in a play on his surname, he named "Rome" after the Italian city, and he renamed the creak in honor of the river which flows through that city. It was southeast of then Georgetown, Maryland, amid lands that were selected for the City of Washington, the new capital of the United States.[1] It flowed south toward the base of Capitol Hill, then west meeting the Potomac near Jefferson Pier.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiber_Creek

2 The Mysterious Mr. Jenkins of Jenkins Hill: The Early History of the Capitol Site John Michael VlachTHE CAPITOL DOME SPRING 2004 Reprinted with the permission of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. ....

The classical allusion encountered in this name was consistent with other names that other early settlers had assigned to their farms. Thompson's neighbor Francis Pope called his 400-acre farm " Rome" and the stream that flowed along its eastern edge the " Tiber." It was, he must have thought, a much better and more imaginative name than its earlier and more prosaic designation of " Goose Creek." Classical allusions signaled lofty goals and they would prove to be very appealing all across the nation well into the nineteenth century./ 2

Source: http://www.capitolhillhistory.org/library/04/Jenkins%20Hill.html

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