St. Mary's College of Maryland history

In 1846, the first board of trustees designed tuition and living costs to be substantially lower than those at similar schools.

President John McCaffrey opened the Jubilee Celebration in 1858 by reflecting on the college’s growth: “The seed they planted then—the seedling, which they nursed and watered with their sweat and tears—is now indeed a noble tree, whose fruits are known, and not unhonored, throughout the world.”

After 1868, when the General Assembly began giving the school annual appropriations, the seminary frequently educated up to half of its students—representing every county of the state and each legislative district of Baltimore City—free of charge.

In 1875, Mount students and seminarians first built the stone replica of Lourdes at the grotto.

The Mount dedicated Echo Field in 1900 as intercollegiate athletics began to grow.

In 1919, The Knights of Columbus received permission to form a council on campus—the first and longest standing council at a Catholic college.

In 1927, their efforts were rewarded when St Mary’s became Maryland’s first junior college, affording students the unique opportunity to complete four years of high school and two years of college at the same institution.

While the prep school closed in 1936, the twentieth century was a time of expansion for the college.

In 1947, the Maryland Commission on Higher Education slated St Mary’s Female Seminary-Junior College for dissolution although it was fully accredited and had begun admitting male students.

He led the Mount to its first NCAA Championship in 1962 and earned national Coach of the Year honors.

A greatly expanded program was offered in 1972.

In 1974, a portion of the field school was assigned the task of beginning work on another early site known as the Van Sweringen Council Chamber Inn.

The summer of 1980 saw a new relationship begin when HSMC’s field school joined forces with Doctor Mark Leone of the University of Maryland and conducted a joint field school at the Van Sweringen site.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 1981 saw the HSMC Field School and University of Maryland Field School initiate a major project that had the goal of finding the center of the long-vanished city.

They also participate in planning and conducting a major annual public archaeology event called Tidewater Archaeology Weekend, which the museum began thirty years ago in 1987.

The Mount has enjoyed success in other sports as well, boasting 12 Olympians including Peter Rono, who won the gold medal in the 1500 meter run at the 1988 Games as only a sophomore under the tutelage of the Mount’s remarkable track and field coach Jim Deegan.

That year was especially busy because it involved preparing the area for a large scale scientific project that would investigate three 17th-century lead coffins buried within the chapel, a discovery originally made by field school students in 1989.

The results were reported in 1994 with the identification of the buried individuals as members of Maryland’s founding family—the Calverts.

In 1996, the field school helped explore a previously unknown building near the Van Sweringen site that the British televisions series TIME TEAM had discovered during the filming of a show at the museum in May of that year.

Students returned to the St John’s site in 2004 to assist in preparing it for construction of a major exhibit building that would cover the well-preserved foundations of this highly significant 1638 building.

In 2005, field school students collected more information from the Van Sweringen site so that a new exhibit could be constructed over the ruins of its Council Chamber.

Beginning in 2008, the museum began a sustained effort to more fully investigate the landscape and outbuildings associated with the Calvert House, Maryland’s first state house.

The chapter will celebrate its centennial in 2019.;