St. Mary's residents played a key role in the development of the Catholic Church throughout the whole of America, providing the spearhead of the westward expansion of Catholicism. In 1785, for example, the first of many Catholic families from St. Mary's crossed the mountains to find land in Kentucky, while a few years later, driven by economic necessity, others migrated to Georgia, Missouri, Louisiana, and Texas.Mr. O'Rourke has collected many of the earliest surviving records of the Catholic families of St. Mary's County, Maryland. The most significant portion of the work contains the...