ABSTRACT
The Roman conquest of America began with the coming of Catholic refugees from famine-stricken Ireland, which migration peaked in the 1840s. Maryland was the only British colony in North America founded by Roman Catholics. The Boston Catholic hierarchy was, especially in its founding days, led by men who were more willing and able to exercise authority than were their Philadelphia peers. In 1808, the dioceses of Boston and Philadelphia were established, the former including all of New England and the latter including all of Pennsylvania and Delaware, as well as southern New Jersey. The Carrolls of Maryland were unquestionably the preeminent family of American Catholicism, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Manor was born at Annapolis, where he was educated at a small Jesuit school before being sent to Paris for further study. The aggressive, intellectual, and proselytizing style of Boston's Irish Catholicism contrasted sharply with the guarded separatism of Philadelphia Catholicism.
