St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland)

St. Francis Xavier Church, or Old Bohemia, is a historic Roman Catholic church located at Warwick, Cecil County, Maryland, United States. It consists of a late-18th-century brick church and an early-19th-century brick rectory connected by a one-story hyphen. The church consists of a four-bay-deep by three-bay-wide brick structure with a 3-story brick tower added on the southwest facade of the church subsequent to its original building in 1792. The rectory is a five-bay-long, 2 ¹⁄₂-story brick building with a two-bay-long hyphen on one end and a two-bay-long kitchen on the other. Also on the property is a public graveyard. Beginning in 1704 the Society of Jesus initiated missionary activities on the site, thereby establishing a second mission in Maryland half a century after the foundation of the Newtown Manor mission in St. Mary's County, Maryland.^[2] A fire gutted the interior in 1912, but the church was rebuilt within the old wall. Regular services discontinued in the 1920s. The Old Bohemia Historical Society now maintains the property.^[3]

The St. Francis Xavier Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.^[1]

References

• Bohemia 1704–2004: A History of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Shrine in Cecil County, Maryland. By Thomas J. Peterman. {The Bohemian Historical Society, Devon, Pennsylvania: William T. Cooke Publishing Co. 2004).

External links

• St. Francis Xavier Church and Rectory, Cecil County, including undated photo, at Maryland Historical Trust
• History of St. Francis Xavier Shrine, Old Bohemia, 1704–2004, by Rev. Thomas J. Peterman; St. Dennis Church website