St. John the Evangelist Church
Washington, Beaufort County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
St. John The Evangelist Church. The first Roman Catholic church in North Carolina. Consecrated, 1829. Burned by Federal troops, 1864. Stood one block east.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Consecrated in 1829 one block east of here, St. John the Evangelist was the first Roman Catholic church in North Carolina, a landmark for a tiny Catholic community in an overwhelmingly Protestant region. Its life was cut short during the Civil War, when Federal troops burned it in 1864. The church stood as a rare marker of Catholic faith on the antebellum Carolina coast.
Why it matters
As the state's first Catholic church, St. John's marks the slow expansion of religious diversity in the early republic — and its wartime burning shows how conflict reached even into houses of worship.
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Burning of Washington
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