ever, the remaining members of the Roman Catholic church, two acres of land where the Roman Catholic church now stands, being part of a tract of land called "The Enclosure.' My intention and will is that these said two acres of land be solely employed and used for the religious purposes of the Roman Catholic church.” How long before the pious Richard Queen made this will Queen's Chapel had been used for parochial purposes is a subject of lively controversy between historians of all shades of religious opinion. According to tradition among the old residents of this section handed down to their descendants, it was coeval with the coming of the Queens from the Bladensburg region to the Enclosure in 1721. The Queens came into possession of their land under patent issued by Leonard Calvert in 1657. They had enormous holdings called Haddock Hills, the Barbadoes and the Seaman's delight, all of which recall the times when the drowsy old town of Bladensburg was a smart seaport and the Queens were a bold and rollicking nautical people. When the elder Richard Queen built his mansion in the pleasant wooded hills of Langdon, he followed the Catholic custom and set aside one wing as a chapel. After his family had increased in patriarchal style, he moved the chapel into an outbuilding, ostensibly a smoke house. Here a huge bell swung in the penal days which summoned the slaves from the tobacco fields but which also gave signal when a priest journeyed up from Whitemarsh to say Mass. Like the ancient belfry of Bruges, Queen's chapel was thrice consumed and thrice rebuilt. It suffered during all the wars which convulsed the country and was a victim of incendiaries during revolutionary times. Again when the British troops came over from Bladensburg in 1814, and the third time during the war between the

states when the Union troops believed the Queens were aiding the Southern cause. The present church of Saint Francis de Sales of which Rev. August M. Mark is pastor, is a compact brick building with a sloping roof of slate and a wide hospitable porch. It was erected about less than three years ago and is rapidly regaining the ancient prestige which Queen's chapel long held among the churches of the District of Columbia.

Before the founding of Georgetown College in 1789, Catholics in the immediate vicinity of Washington depended on the chapel in the Notley Young mansion. When George Washington came in March, 1791, to close the land contracts for the site of the capital city which bears his name he took lodgings at Suter's tavern, a one-story frame house in Georgetown. The mother city of Washington was then a thriving seaport doing a large business in the exportation of tobacco. It had been founded in 1751 at the juncture of time made famous by Holmes

"Georgius Secundus was then alive

Snuffy old drone from the German hive"

-and that Hanoverian monarch of very moderate ability is honored in its name. Tradition claims an old chapel about Upper Georgetown and there was a venerated graveyard which showed tombstones dating back to 1762, which with the remains they marked were later moved to the cemetery near the College Walks. After Georgetown College had been established, the chapel was used for parochial purposes until Trinity church, founded in 1792, was ready for occupancy. Valuable details about the founding of Trinity church are contained in the Woodstock letters and in the Baltimore annals. The deed by which Bishop Carroll pur

chased the site is on file in Baltimore and shows that John Threlkeld in 1787 yielded title, but at such a low figure that he virtually bestowed it upon the church. Father Francis Xavier Neale, the first pastor of Holy Trinity Church, stands out luminously against the shadowy background of other workers in this field. His memory deserves to be called blessed because he was the first Catholic pastor to keep a register, an inadequate one from the modern viewpoint, but still it has the honor of being the very first vital statistics dealing with the District of Columbia. Francis Neale came of illustrious ancestry, and like his contemporaries the Carrolls, Brents, Fenwicks and others he received his education at Liege and Saint Omer's. He was the direct descendant of the doughty Captain James Neale who came to the Palatinate in 1641. Captain Neale's plantation was a vast tract near the Wicomico river and was surveyed for his settlement in 1642. He was privy-councillor of Maryland and rendered eminent service to the lord proprietor. One of his daughters, Henrietta Maria Neale, was a famous belle in her day and married into the equally honorable family of Jenkins, which had been located at the head of the Saint Mary's River since 1660. Father Francis Neale, brother of Leonard, second archbishop of Baltimore, and of Charles, another illustrious missionary priest, was born in Charles County June 3, 1756. He was ordained at Liege on April 3, 1788, and returned at once to Maryland, where he began parochial duties about Georgetown, Washington and down the Potomac River. He was at Georgetown College from the beginning of its history and was afterwards its president. The venerable manuscript in which Father Neale kept his register is a yellow paper-backed book almost crumbling to pieces and the entries are becom