page_title: St. Inigoes, Maryland
section_title: Former plantations
hierarchical_section_title: St. Inigoes, Maryland / History / Former plantations
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of Jesuit stations in Maryland from the 17th to the 19th centuries, showing the locations of Jesuit plantations, farms, and schools, including Bohemia, Frederick, Georgetown, Leonardtown, Newtown, Port Tobacco, St. Inigoes, St. Joseph, St. Thomas, Wshington, White Marsh, and Woodstock.
context_page_description: St. Inigoes, sometimes called St. Inigoes Shores, is a small, rural, unincorporated farming, fishing and crabbing community at the southern end of St. Mary's County in the U.S. state of Maryland that is undergoing a transition to small residential subdevelopment plots. Its eastern side is bordered by a number of coves and creeks that are connected to the St. Marys River, a brackish tidal river, near where it feeds into the mouth of the Potomac River and close to its entry point into the Chesapeake Bay.
  It is a part of the site of the first colonial settlement in Maryland and is also therefore part of the fourth colonial settlement in North America.
  St. Inigoes is also the site of the oldest Catholic parish in the United States, dating back to the 1640s. St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, which is located in St. Inigoes, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The parish is still active today.
  It also hosts a small naval air facility called Webster Field, as well as Coast Guard Station St. Inigoes, and is the site of the USS Tulip Civil War monument.
  St. Inigoes also has a small commercial area with a general store, a pool hall and a gas station.
context_section_description: A few former pre–Civil War plantations are also located in St. Inigoes; some still have ruins of former slave quarters. One slave plantation, "The Villa", was operated by a local order of Jesuits. In the 18th century, visitors to these Maryland plantations—including St. Inigoes and nearby Newtown plantation, also in St. Mary's Country—documented the Catholic clergy's dependence on slavery in order to subsist, and the violence that routinely occurred on the plantations. One visitor, Irish priest Patrick Smyth, published a treatise that accused the Maryland Catholic clergy of abusing the enslaved people, providing ample evidence and first-hand testimony from the enslaved people. For example, Granny Sucky was a ninety-six-year-old enslaved woman at the time of her interview, who shared that Father John Bolton of St. Inigoes beat her when she was a child (in the mid-18th century) for interrupting his self-flagellation. In addition to violence, child mortality was also high at St. Inigoes and other Jesuit plantations.
  Most of these historic sites are not publicly accessible, and all but one are on private land. There are no public facilities for displaying or interpreting this part of local history.
  Another former plantation, also on private land, Cross Manor, was listed as a historic landmark with the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
caption: Notice St. Inigoes in the upper right. Map of Maryland Jesuit Plantations, from the 17th-19th centuries.
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