Jesuits -- Maryland Province -- Procurators

Scope and Contents Series 2, the Records of the Procurator, includes financial and legal documents related to the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, and covers the years 1633-1968. The Procurator - effectively the treasurer of the province - had oversight of finances, and the records in this series reveal the emergence of a tobacco-centered economy in the mid-Atlantic region in the seventeenth century, its diversification beginning in the late eighteenth century, and the decline of agriculture in...

Scope and Contents Subseries 2.1 is comprised of Subject Files related to the Province’s finances, dating from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. These records were organized by the Provincial Procurator (treasurer) out of loose collections of financial correspondence, deeds and land surveys, invoices, receipts, statements, and contracts. The Subject Files subseries also contains many of the key legal and financial documents related to the Maryland Province’s sale of 272 enslaved individuals in...

Scope and Contents This subseries consists of correspondence related to the Province’s property, finances, and the office of the Provincial Procurator. While the Province generally retained few of the letters sent by the Provincial Procurator himself, those letters that do survive, located in this subseries, provide insight into the Province’s handling of financial and property-related matters, including the purchase, treatment, and sale of enslaved people. These letters are, therefore, especially important...

Scope and Contents This subseries is comprised of monthly and annual statements related to Provincial finances. These statements pertain to select Houses, high schools, and colleges, as well as mission activity in Jamaica, New England, and New York. The subseries also includes reports prepared by the Provincial Procurator for the Society’s Procurator General in Rome. Statements were compiled retrospectively (in the early 20th century) by Procurator Joseph Zwingé for the years 1802 to 1893, in an account book...

Scope and Contents This subseries consists of account books, expense journals, donation records, seminary fund records, and receipts related to both general and specialized accounts maintained by the Provincial Procurator. Account records are especially robust for the duration of the Maryland-New York Province (1879-1943), but also reflect financial matters during the period of Jesuit slaveholding, with some documentation of the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved individuals (Box 78, Folder 2) . The...

Scope and Contents Subseries 2.5 contains financial records pertaining to estate properties in southern Maryland and Pennsylvania held by the Jesuits of the Maryland Province. These records document the management of plantations that depended upon enslaved labor, and of lands leased to tenant farmers. The Province’s Procurators maintained financial records of the estates detailing day-to-day expenses; accounts with overseers, vendors, and trading partners; the costs of provisions for enslaved laborers; the...