Clopper Family, St Rose of Lima, Civil War

Did you know that St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, which dates back to the Clopper Family of the early 1800’s, has a Civil War secret?

Francis Cassatt Clopper of Pennsylvania loved the beautiful Maryland landscape and dreamed about buying a farm one day and living off the land. In 1812, Clopper bought the huge tract of land between Old Germantown and Gaithersburg which we now refer to as Seneca Creek State Park.

Clopper, a Protestant, and his Catholic wife, Ann Jane Byrne, relocated from Philadelphia and constructed a large 24-room residence, naming it “the Woodlands” because of the many giant oak trees.

The Woodlands quickly became a hub of activity for Catholic families in the area, with masses often celebrated in the large ballroom.

In 1834, at the request of his wife and her sister, Ellen Maher, Clopper donated a small corner of the Woodlands estate for a church and cemetery.

Using bricks made on the Clopper plantation, the plan was to build the most beautiful church in Western Maryland, and by the end of 1835 a small Romanesque-style church was erected at the site.

Clopper named the church St. Rose in honor of Mother Rose Landry White, a close family friend and Mother Superior at St. Joseph’s Academy for Women in Emmitsburg, MD.

In July of 1864, Union and Confederate troops were engaged in a battle on the Monocacy River near Frederick. Union forces were badly outnumbered and were in retreat.

With Confederate troops advancing into Maryland, Private William Scott and a group of about five Virginia cavalrymen were passing through Germantown as part of a scouting unit. They halted briefly for dinner at the home of Joseph A. Taney.

Union soldiers happened upon Scott and his unit and fired on them. They quickly mounted their horses and got away. But Scott had to retrieve his horse from the stable and was struck in the side by a bullet as he rode off.

Scott managed to stay mounted on his horse and avoid capture by riding through the woods, across Seneca Creek and past the mill. He could see a large house in the distance and set his course there.

When Scott reached the house, he spotted a young slave girl and asked, “May I die on your porch?”

Scott was brought inside the Clopper home, which was now also home to their daughter Mary Augusta Clopper, and her husband, William Rich Hutton. A Confederate surgeon from Rockville arrived later that day and extracted the bullet, but it had penetrated his liver and stomach and he lost a considerable amount of blood.

With death looming, Private Scott requested baptism and Hutton performed the Rite. Scott survived the night but died the next morning.

The family feared repercussions for Confederate sympathies, so they constructed a coffin and buried Scott in the churchyard of St. Rose in secret, after nightfall, in an unmarked grave.

It was not until the 1930’s that a headstone was placed at the grave of Private Scott by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The solitary gravestone can still be seen under the large oak in front of the St. Rose historic chapel.

After undergoing significant renovation in 1882, St. Rose Church was destroyed by fire in April of 1883. The community quickly regrouped and a new church was constructed and dedicated in 1884.

From the beginning, St. Rose was as a mission church, first under the parish of St. Mary’s in Rockville, then St. Mary of Barnesville and later St. Martin’s in Gaithersburg. More than 130 years after Francis and Ann Clopper opened the doors of the first St. Rose Church, St. Rose of Lima became a parish on June 1, 1972.

Research for this article was gathered from “The History of St. Rose Church and the Catholic Community,” compiled by Gene Domalski, Parish Historian, 2004 and “North South Trader’s Civil War,” Vol. XXl No. 5, Sept-Oct 1994.