Unsung History28 Jul 2025

Catholicism in the American Colonies

Before American independence and the Bill of Rights promising religious freedom, the American colonies were English territory governed by English religious law that mandated worship according to the Book of Common Prayer. Even Maryland, which had been founded as a place for Catholics to worship freely, was majority Protestant and intolerant of public Catholicism by the time of the Revolution. Nonetheless, Catholics, including wealthy English landowners, Irish servants, and enslaved Africans, continued to live and worship throughout the American colonies, finding ways to keep their beliefs and customs alive. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Susan Juster, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at the Huntington Library and author of A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Ave Maria,” composed by Charles Gounod and sung by Florence Hayward; the recording was made on January 30, 1905, in Philadelphia and is in the public domain and can be accessed via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “The Founding of Maryland, 1634,” painted by Emmanuel Leutze in 1860; the painting is in the public domain and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

“Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists,” Library of Congress.
“10 facts about U.S. Catholics,” byJustin Nortey, Patricia Tevington, and Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research Center, March 4, 2025.
“Maryland's History,” Maryland Secretary of State.
“The Catholic church in colonial days : the thirteen colonies, the Ottawa and Illinois country, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, 1521-1763,” by John Gilmary Shea, 1886.
“American Catholic History Resources,” The Catholic University of America.
“Catholicism in the Early South,” by Maura Jane Farrelly, Journal of Southern Religion 14 (2012).
“Descendants of Jesuit Slaveholding and Jesuits of the United States Announce Historic Partnership,” Jesuit Conference of Canada and the U.S.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(230)

Jane Addams, Hull House, and Chicago's Nineteenth Ward

In the fall of 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House on Chicago’s Near West Side, full of good intentions to help the poor people of the neighborhood. They were a force for good, p...

10 Aug 46min

Buddy Bradley

Buddy Bradley, born in the Jim Crow South in 1905, made his way to Harlem at age 16 where he learned to tap dance and became a chorus boy. He was sought out on Broadway as both teacher and choreograph...

27 Jul 50min

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

During World War II, afraid that major league baseball would need to pause while men were overseas fighting, Philip K. Wrigley, chewing gum mogul and owner of the Chicago Cubs, spearheaded a new profe...

13 Jul 54min

The Declaration of Independence

The Continental Congress voted to break from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, and approved the text of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, but it took weeks for the news to spread throughout the ...

29 Jun 48min

The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building

The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building loom large in the American imagination, symbolizing the conflicting ideas of liberty and empire; their meanings and characters have shifted over tim...

15 Jun 38min

An American History of Purses

Today the US handbag market is estimated to be nearly $12 billion, with most of the purchasing done by women, but into the early 20th Century purses hadn’t yet become the nearly-exclusive domain of wo...

1 Jun 40min

The Lady Bird Special

On the morning of Tuesday, October 6, 1964, the Lady Bird Special, a 19-car train carrying First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, her supporters, members of the press, and a security detail, departed...

18 Mai 41min

Policing Slavery & Black Rebellion in the American South

Enslaved Africans were forcibly shipped to Virginia starting in 1619 in response to a severe labor shortage. From the beginning, enslaved laborers resisted by fleeing and through violence, and white e...

4 Mai 50min