The history of Georgetown University spans nearly four hundred years, from the early European settlement of America to the present day. Georgetown University has grown with both its city, Washington, D.C., and the United States, each of which date their founding to the period from 1788 to 1790. Georgetown's origins are in the establishment of the Maryland colony in the seventeenth century. Bishop John Carroll established the school at its present location by the Potomac River after the American Revolution allowed for free religious practice.
The role of the Society of Jesus in the school's operation has evolved from that of founders and financiers to faculty and advisers. Their focus on liberal studies and religious pluralism have helped to give the school its identity. Georgetown was also affected by its times, including the American Civil War, which disrupted the growing school and significantly changed its student body. University presidents like Patrick Francis Healy modernized the institution into an active research university with several graduate and undergraduate schools, and oversaw the expansion of educational opportunities on campus, around the city, and abroad.
Founding
The history of Georgetown University traces back to two formative events, in 1634 and 1789. Until 1851, the school used 1788, the start of construction on the Old South building, as its founding date. In that year a copy-edit in the college catalog began mislabeling the construction as beginning in 1789. This was discovered in preparation for the centennial celebration in 1889, at which point rather than correct the annual, the date of Georgetown's foundation was fixed to the date January 23, 1789.
First establishments
On November 22, 1633 Jesuits Andrew White, John Altham Gravenor, and Thomas Gervase set sail on The Ark for English America under the leadership and financing of the Lord Baltimore, Leonard Calvert. Their landing on March 25, 1634, on St. Clement's Island marks the birth of the Maryland colony, this anniversary now celebrated as Maryland Day. These Jesuits were joined in 1637 by Thomas Copley and Ferdinand Poulton, and together established a missionary fort next to a series of native dwellings near St. Mary's City on land purchased from the local Yaocomico tribe, which they paid for with hatchets, axes, hoes, and cloth.
Inquiring about patronage for a school at this site, Poulton wrote to Vincenzo Carafa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus in Rome under Pope Urban VIII, who on September 15, 1640, approved the institution of a school in principle. That year they moved to a permanent building at Calverton Manor on in the Wicomico River. This early establishment was burnt in 1645 as part of the English Civil War, and the remaining Jesuits were brought to trial by the Crown. The new Protestant administration had their school outlawed, though it was functioning by 1648, when Thomas Copley managed to return there.
Newtown Manor, also known as "Bretton's Neck", near modern-day Leonardtown, Maryland, become available to the Jesuits in 1677. This house served as the Jesuit schoolhouse until 1704 when its existence was alerted to the colonial authorities. The school afterward conducted itself periodically and in secrecy at the new Jesuit colony of Bohemia Manor. Bishop John Carroll attended this school from 1745 until 1748. Carroll then left for studies in Europe. He joined the Jesuits in 1753, and was ordained in 1769, but in 1774 Pope Clement XIV ordered the suppression of the Jesuit order, forcing Carroll to return to Maryland. This put Carroll in the right place at the right time, when the American Revolution pushed out the British administration, opening up new possibilities for scholastic expansion.
Georgetown Heights
After returning in 1774 to live on the Rock Creek in Maryland, Carroll established Saint John the Evangelist Church, in Silver Spring, Maryland. In 1776, his cousin, Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, invited John to join him, Samuel Chase, and Benjamin Franklin in traveling to Quebec and attempt to persuade the French Canadian population to join the revolution. The mission was unsuccessful, but John Carroll's association with Benjamin Franklin proved useful. In 1784, Franklin, as ambassador to France, recommended Carroll to the papal nuncio in Paris as the head of the Catholic Church in America, and on June 9, 1784, Carroll was anointed Superior of Missions in the United States of North America. On November 6, 1789, Carroll's authority was confirmed after being elected by the clergy as the first Bishop of Baltimore.