Mary Brackett Willcox and Catholicism in the Suburbs

A New England Puritan becomes a prominent and influential Catholic in the Diocese of Philadelphia. An unlikely story but one that happened to Mary Brackett. Mary was born in 1796 in Massachusetts to Captain James Brackett and Elizabeth Odiorne.[1] In 1819, she married James Mark Willcox from Ivy Mill, PA.[2]

Continue reading

Catholics in WWII

May 8th 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of VE day, the end of the second world war in Europe. In honor of the anniversary, this month’s blog will look at some of the WWII material in the CHRC collections. Majority of our records from WWII come from Cardinal Dougherty’s collection,

Continue reading

Mathew Carey

A major figure in the fields of literature, religion, and economics in the post Revolution America, has often been overlooked and forgotten. That figure is Mathew Carey, an Irish Catholic immigrant who helped shape the intellectual landscape of Philadelphia. Born on January 26, 1760 in Dublin, Carey entered a printing

Continue reading

Archbishop John Carroll

With a high school named after him and a statue in the Centennial Fountain, Archbishop John Carroll has had a continued presence in the city of Philadelphia. As the first bishop of the United States, Carroll had a major impact on Catholicism in America, but who was John Carroll and

Continue reading