Qualla: Georgetown University

Georgetown University: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gilbert Stuart, Public domain. John Carroll signed the founding deed for Georgetown College on January 23, 1789, three months before George Washington was inaugurated as the first president. Carroll was a Maryland-born Jesuit, the cousin of Charles Carroll the Declaration signer, and the first Catholic bishop appointed in the United States. The Jesuit order had been suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773 and would not be restored until 1814, but Carroll and other former Jesuits were determined to establish a Catholic college in the new American republic. They bought sixty acres on the heights above Georgetown, then a separate town two miles upriver from the Capitol building that did not yet exist. The first student, William Gaston, enrolled in 1791. Two hundred thirty-five years later, the institution is still here, still Catholic, still Jesuit, and still teaching from the same hill.

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Image: Gilbert Stuart | Public domain

Georgetown University: Carroll's College

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0. John Carroll's project was politically delicate. Catholics in colonial America had been a tolerated minority at best, and in some colonies had been banned outright. Maryland, founded as a refuge for English Catholics in 1632, had become Protestant-dominated by the early eighteent...

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Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 2.0

Georgetown University: The Civil War and 272 Souls

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Duane Lempke, CC0. The Civil War nearly destroyed Georgetown. Enrollment collapsed as Southern students left to fight for the Confederacy. The school's finances had already been precarious. To raise emergency funds, the Maryland Jesuits who owned Georgetown sold 272 enslaved men, women, and childre...

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Image: Duane Lempke | CC0

Georgetown University: Healy and the Spires

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Patrickneil, CC BY-SA 3.0. Healy Hall, the gothic spire that dominates the Georgetown campus, was completed in 1879 by architects John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Pelz and named for Patrick Healy, the Jesuit priest who served as president from 1873 to 1882 and who is considered the second founder of the univ...

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Image: Patrickneil | CC BY-SA 3.0

Georgetown University: Foreign Service and the Diplomatic Pipeline

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Department of State from United States, Public domain. The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, founded in 1919, was the first school of international affairs at an American university. Walsh, another Jesuit priest, had served on the relief mission to Russia after the revolution and saw the need for trained American diplomats. ...

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Image: U.S. Department of State from United States | Public domain

Georgetown University: Up the Hill

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0. Today Georgetown enrolls about 7,500 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students from more than 135 countries. The main campus occupies 104 acres on the bluff above the Potomac, with Healy Hall's clock tower visible from much of downtown Washington and from approaches on the rive...

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Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 2.0