"Notes from a Diary Kept in Geo. Town College", 1839 - 1870

Twenty pages of handwritten notes by Fr. Maguire.

Included are references to taking his vows in the "little Chapel of St. Ignatius"; the student body numbering between 200 hundred and 250; Fr. McSherry as Rector ("he was a man of most gentle amiable manners and kindness personified"); the majority of students coming from Southern states; frequent fights between the "Creole"/"French" boys and the "American" boys; prefects and teachers being "exposed to great dangers from the wild half-civilized boys in the College"; the Ki Yi Yi student rebellion of 1850 (as well as a later student disturbance after he became President); "the New College for the small boys" (Maguire Hall); conversion of Protestant students; the deaths of Frs. George Fenwick, Virgil Barber, and John Stephen Gabaria; and the opening of St. Aloysius Church in Washington, DC.

Also described is the impact of the Civil War: "The War came and Washington was full of excitment and soldiers. Hospitals in every part of the City increased our work very much ... The Civil War nearly ruined the College. From three hundred and fifty boys the number fell to 50 or sixty ... The buildings had suffered because the soldiers had occupied at various periods of the war nearly the whole College. There was a marked difference in the character of the students after the War. They were more studious, more obedient and they all felt the neccessity of hard work."

He also mentions a new roof on the "North Building" (Old North); the building of "a heavy wall of solid masonry" to enclose the College" (along 37th street); President Ulysses S. Grant attending the 1869 commencement and the need to keep him apart from former President Andrew Johnson, whose son was enrolled at Georgetown; the impact of the opening of Woodstock College on the availability of teachers and prefects; and the opening of the Law Department.