APPENDIX

The Fabled Jesuit Tress of St. Mary's City—Act of 1727 or the

Encouragement of William Parks— A Summary ofjonas

Green's Relations with the Assembly

NE regrets the inadvisability of beginning this study of
Maryland printing history with the interesting account
of its origins invented and set afoot by Scharf (History of
Maryland, 1: 190), wherein it is related that a catechism,
composed by Father Andrew White in the Indian dialects,
was printed on a press controlled by the Jesuit missionaries
of St. Mary's sometime before the year 1655. Scharf's story
was based solely upon his understanding or misunderstanding of Father
William McSherry's report (probably an oral report) of his discoveries in the
Professed House of the Jesuits in Rome, where in 1832 he had found the man-
uscript of Father White's Relatio Itineris in Marylandiam and a catechism
in the Indian language by the same author. Of all authorities who mention
these works, Scharf is the only one who believed, or to whom the thought
seems to have occurred, that the catechism was a printed book. B.U. Camp-
bell (Metropolitan Catholic Almanac, Baltimore 1841, pp. 43-68) mentions
Father McSherry's discovery, but says nothing as to the catechism having
been printed. Richard H. Clarke (Metropolitan Magazine, Baltimore, 1856,
p. 75) implies that the catechism was in manuscript. These two writers were
con temporaries of Father McSherry; Scharf wrote a generation or more aft-
er his death. The late Rev. E. I. Devitt, S. J., Professor of Colonial History in
Georgetown University (Catholic Encyclopaedia, ar tide "White, Andrew"),
says "these works" (/. e. Father White's Relatio, Grammar, Dictionary and
Catechism) "were manuscript compositions." He repeats this statement
with considerable elaboration in the Sun, B al timore, June 2, 1907, and most
emphatically in a letter to the author written a few days before his lamented
death in 1920. John Gilmary Shea (Catholic Church in Colonial Day's, New
York, 1886, p. 41) writes, "The manuscript of the Relatio with an Indian
catechism was found in 183 2 in the Archives of the Professed House at Rome,
by an American Jesuit, Father William McSherry." Neither Father H. J.

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