Holy Family Catholic Church Cemetery, Baltimore Co., MD

The following extract is from a limited publication produced especially for Holy Family Church–Randallstown, MD
called “The Story of Holy Family Church and The Bicentennial History of Catholic America” by:
Custombook, Inc., The Custom Building, So. Hackensack, N.J. 07606, 1976.

In the Beginning

The area in the Second District of Baltimore County, which came to be known as Randallstown, Harrisonville, and North Branch, where Holy Family Church has stood for over one hundred years, was once a vast wilderness known as Soldier’s Delight.

In the beginning this name was applied to all of Maryland extending from Elkridge Landing, a shipping point to England, northwestward to the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

In the late 1700’s the Soldier’s Delight Hundred was reduced to an area of approximately twenty-thousand acres of farmland. It was protected by Fort Garrison, which was situated near what we know today as Old Court Road and extended westward to (and beyond) the North Branch of the Patapsco River, where the Liberty Reservoir is now located.

This twenty thousand acres was owned principally by the Owings, the Randalls, and later by the Worthingtons, Chapmans, and the Ourslers. Many of these names are still well-known in the neighborhood surrounding Holy Family today. The homes built on these extensive farms were usually small log or stone cabins consisting of two large rooms built on two levels.

This vast tract of country was without roads, difficult to traverse in daylight, and almost impassable at night. Old timers joke that in the days of the Revolution, the residents came out once a year to vote in November, and it took them until Christmas to find their way back home.

The self-sufficient farming existence of these families continued undisturbed until the mid-1800’s when two major events changed the isolated nature of the area: the coming of the railroads and the opening of granite quarries to the south, in the Woodstock-Granite area, and the chrome mines to the northwest in the Deer Park area.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, running south from Ellicott City, and the Western Maryland Railroad, north from McDonogh Station and Pikesville, brought a more sophisticated way of life to the area. By the mid-1800’s the small two-room cabins were expanded as wood frame structures were added to the original stone cabins.

North of Holy Family Church is the Piedmont Belt of the Appalachian coastal plane. It is one of nature’s wonderlands, as indicated by the concentrated presence of many minerals: chrominum, copper, magnesium, even platinum and diamonds. This area has always been of great interest to the geologist and botanist since it contains one of the large chrome deposits of the world.

Influx of Irish Catholics

The opening of chrome and copper mines in the upper section of Baltimore County between Harrisonville and Mechanicsville, brought an influx of Irish Catholics into the area. The first mission to these newcomers was an occasional visit of a priest from St. John's in Westminster. From 1852 until 1872 a priest would say Mass about once a month at the home of the Lee family on Deer Park Road, in Carroll County near the North Branch of the Patapsco River. These services were held for about twenty years and the Lee house was called the Mechanicsville mission of St. John’s Church in Westminster.

Germans now began to migrate into the area and establish truck farms in the western part of the White Grounds, in the vicinity of Randallstown. A few of the truck farmers pushed out as far as Harrisonville, the first location of Holy Family Church.

During the Civil War, New Tavern, the Ward home on the Liberty Turnpike in Harrisonville, was sold to a Mr. James Harker. Originally an inn, and more recent to the 1840’s a place of worship for local Methodists, the house was one of the old fashioned, double log houses, comfortable and roomy.

The Harkers were Catholics and Mrs. Mary Louisa Harker (nee Betts) was especially concerned for the proper religious training of the Catholic families who worked the chrome mines. She established a Sunday School at her home in 1872, with the help of Jesuits who three years earlier had opened Woodstock College, south of Harrisonville. this generous Catholic family also gave a room on the ground floor of their home for a chapel, where Mass was celebrated once a month. Marriages were blessed there and the regenerating waters of baptism poured on the heads of the children of those early Catholics. The Harker home, which still stands on Liberty Road in the area of Holbrook about four miles west of Randallstown, has been designated as an historical landmark by the Baltimore County Historical Society.

The Holy Family Parish owes much to this family and to the catechetical work of the Jesuit scholastics who began their instruction to children and adults so long ago, continuing their work until the mid-1960’s. Many of these Jesuit teachers later became well-known as authors, educators, and theologians of the Jesuit order.

Since most of the homes were isolated in those early days, the priest would celebrate a funeral Mass in the home of the deceased. It was also quite usual to baptize children and perform marriages in private homes, owning to the distance from the church.

Mission Church

In 1876 the congregation that met at the Harker house was officially established as the Mission of the Holy Family. Two years later, Reverend Salvator Brandi, S.J., was appointed pastor, although Reverend Blasius Schiffini, S.J., had previously been in charge of the mission. Father Brandi was a brilliant, young, Italian Jesuit of the Neapolitan Province, who had stopped at Woodstock College on his way to join the Jesuit mission in New Mexico. While at Woodstock, in spite of the order which prompted him to leave Italy and give his life to the remote missions of the American Southwest, he generously allowed a young scholastic, John Aloysius Chester, who was ill with tuberculosis, to take his place while Brandi remained in Woodstock. He continued his studies, was ordained in 1876 and joined the faculty, teaching metaphysics, and later dogmatic theology. But, his missionary spirit was a dominant trait; he had jointed the mission band which taught Sunday School in the Harker house in Harrisonville.

Now, as pastor of the congregation he realized that they had become too numerous for the private chapel. It was largely through his efforts that Holy Family’s first house of worship was built in 1880. The small wood frame structure measuring twenty-eight feet by forty-eight feet, costing approximately fifteen hundred dollars, can be found today on Liberty Road less than a mile east of the old Harker home. It is interesting to note that the reality of a Catholic church in Harrisonville was due to the hard work and contributions of many people, Catholic and Protestant alike. The land on which the church and cemetery stand, as well as substantial financial support, was donated by two prominent non-Catholics, Thomas Worthington and his father, Mr. R. Worthington, Esquire.

The cornerstone of the Holy Family Church was laid on May 16, 1880, and several months later on November 21, 1880, the Feast of the Presentation, Father Brandi celebrated the first Mass. Both of these solemn and momentous events were attended by several hundred local residents, two-thirds of whom were not of the Catholic religion. Also participating were priests, seminarians, and the choir from Woodstock College. The first Baptism performed in the new church was that of Mark Joyce, who became a child of God in August, 1880, at the hands of Reverend Edward Devitt, S.J.

Made available to The USGenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project by:
Daniel K. Petruccelli (apetruccelli@worldnet.att.net)

Early History of Old Holy Family Church and Cemetery Harrisonville, Maryland