For The Dialog
PORT DEPOSIT, MD. — The pastor calls St. Teresa Church a gem, but for many who attend Sunday Mass in the small church nestled into a granite hillside it might be called family.
Some of those parishioners have ancestors who attended the church overlooking the Susquehanna River since shortly after it was constructed following the Civil War.
Parishioners will celebrate St. Teresa’s 150th anniversary with a Mass at 10 a.m. July 17. Since the church can seat only about 150 people, reservations are required.
To accommodate those who cannot attend the Mass in person, a seven-tenths of a mile march down Main Street will follow from St. Teresa to the Carriage House, where a reception will be held. A trolley will be available for those unable to walk that distance. (The usual 8 a.m. Mass will also be held that morning.)
Bishop Malooly is expected to celebrate the anniversary Mass and participate in the march.
A week later, a time capsule will be buried in a high garden on the entry level of the church.
“I consider St. Teresa the ‘gem’ of the parish, nestled in the side of a granite hillside,” said Father Jay McKee, pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Perryville that includes St. Teresa along with St. Agnes in Rising Sun and the seldom used St. Patrick’s Chapel in Pilottown.
“St. Teresa’s 150th anniversary celebrates a vibrant, faith-filled community in the past; a strong commitment to maintain the faith community today, and a community looking boldly toward another 150 years of faith-filled witness to the community at- large,” the pastor added.
Jan Kuhs, the chair for the anniversary celebration, said St. Teresa “is what a church should be. It’s warm, quiet and beautiful. It just gives you a sense of peace.”
She considers herself a relative newcomer. “I’ve only been going there 15 years, not very long when you look at 150 years.”
Mike LeBrun is a lifelong parishioner who turns 84 this month. His family has attended St. Teresa for more than a century. “I was baptized, married, and confirmed in that church,” he said. He considers St. Teresa to be a special place, but adds, “any church is special.”
His daughter, Renee LeBrun, continues the family legacy as a St. Teresa parishioner.
Joanne Bierly, another lifelong parishioner, said there are “a handful” of families at the church that grew up going to St. Teresa. “They are still very active, and some young people in those same families are continuing.”
One of her grandfathers was baptized at St. Teresa in 1873.
The Catholic community in Port Deposit predates St. Teresa Church. According to the Maryland Index of Historic Places website, Mass was held in Abraham’s Hall, a bank, and at Tome Institute in Port Deposit, now the Tome School in North East, Md.
Plans for St. Teresa began before the Civil War, when about 250 people petitioned the Diocese of Wilmington for a church in Port Deposit, Bierly said. The property where the church sits was acquired in 1859 but the war effort delayed construction until 1866.
St. Teresa was home for a parish that served western Cecil County until 1949, when Good Shepherd was organized in Perryville. St. Teresa’s Parish included St. Patrick’s in Pilottown, constructed in 1819 but seldom used since 1908, and St. Agnes in Rising Sun, formed in 1891.
The decision to base the parish in Perryville was due in part to the small size of St. Teresa Church, according to Kuhs. “We don’t have any way of growing.” Like the town of Port Deposit, St. Teresa is sandwiched between the Susquehanna River to the west and high granite bluffs to the east along the town’s north-south thoroughfare, Main Street.
Port Deposit has weathered a number of economic storms over the years. Originally its economy was based on shipping and some fishing. That was hampered when Conowingo Dam, just upstream from Port Deposit, was built in 1927. A major boost came when Bainbridge Naval Training Center opened in 1942 at the former Tome School for Boys; the base was deactivated in 1976. In recent years the area has gained new life with riverside housing and restaurants.
Those new residences bring new families, said Bierly. The children of some of those families now attend St. Teresa, much as she did while growing up. Her favorite spot then, as now, was the choir loft, and the newer families remind her of the sight she had when she was growing up.
“I was so happy when I could go upstairs and sit in the choir loft by myself,” she said. “I just loved looking down and seeing whole families with their own pews.”
