Here is some history on three of St. Mary's great founding pastors. All are buried in a row at our cemetery, Revs. Alig, who built the first church; Glaab, who built the present church; and Roth, who further beautified the present church respectively.

Fr. Mathias Alig:
The first pastor of St. Mary's. Born in Switzerland in 1803, son of wealthy farmers, he was asked by the archbishop of Baltimore to minister to German Catholics in Washington, DC, in the new parish established in 1845. The German community then was very small, but they clamored for their own church where they could hear sermons in their own language. At first, he celebrated Mass to a handful of about twenty immigrant families in a house owned by the Rupperts on 8th Street, NW. In 1846, as soon as he became pastor, he began negotiations and personally helped pay for land to be added to the existing parcels donated by General Van Ness for the construction of a German church. The cornerstone was laid on the feast of the Annunciation in 1846 and completed by October that year. Alig then paid for land and oversaw the construction of a school and convent, and invited the School Sisters of Notre Dame to teach there in 1853.

• In 1868, Alig helped the establishment of St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill to meet the needs of the growing German community in "East Washington."
• In 1869, Alig oversaw the establishment of St. Mary's Orphanage on the property that is now our parking lot and ultimately in the existing building from 1902 that housed the convent and orphanage right behind the school. That institution, also run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, continued to admit orphans until 1914.
• In 1870, Alig personally paid $1,000 for the purchase of the land that is now St. Mary's Cemetery and paid off any remaining debt on the land so that the parish would hold perpetual title to the property. He presided over the consecration on the Feast of the Annunciation that year.
• Alig died in 1882 and bequeathed every penny he had to establish an endowment for the church and the school. His personal charity toward the parish and its establishment was the hallmark of his tenure at St. Mary's.
• When the original church was built in 1846, there were about 200 registered parishioners at St. Mary's. By the time Fr. Alig died in 1882, St. Mary's had grown to over 1,800 parishioners. The parish records show that he officiated at 2,771 baptisms and 521 weddings during his tenure.

Rev. Dr. George Glaab:
Fr. Glaab became pastor of St. Mary's in 1889 and oversaw the construction of our present church designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin, the same architect as Caldwell Hall at Catholic University built just two years earlier. Glaab was young, vibrant, a noted scholar, and devoted to ministering to the poor and sick of the parish. Every account of him in the parish records shows that he was beloved by his parishioners. As a result of an illness he contracted administering the last rites to a dying, indigent parishioner during a snowy winter day (when he made his sick calls on foot), he died in 1900 at only 37 years old. Glaab was born in Baltimore in 1863 and was orphaned by the age of 17. He graduated from St. Mary's Seminary at the head of his class and was ordained by Cardinal Gibbons. He went on to Rome and earned his doctorate in Theology. Gibbons personally selected Glaab to assist with the preliminary investigation into the cause for beatification of Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity.

Fr. John Roth:
Cardinal Gibbons appointed Fr. Roth to become pastor of St. Mary's in 1911. He was born near Lintz on the Rhine in Germany in 1869, studied at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, and was ordained by Cardinal Gibbons. Roth arrived at St. Mary's to find a parish with some considerable debt and the twenty year-old church in need of some work. He embarked on a concerted effort to retire any outstanding accounts and beautify the interior of the church, which warranted a few improvements and additions to those in place for the dedication in 1890.

One of his first accomplishments after settling the finances was to commission the two marble angels flanking the high altar, designed by Francis Pustet in New York and sculpted in Italy. In 1920, he secured the four great bells from the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore, one of which is dedicated to former pastor Glaab, and he oversaw the installation of the Seth Thomas clockworks built in Connecticut. They are 100 years old this year. Roth also commissioned the three stained glass windows above the high altar depicting the Blessed Virgin surrounded by angels holding the scrolls proclaiming her "Sancta Maria Mater Dei." Before these were installed, the arched openings had been covered over with decorative wooden boards with religious paintings facing the sanctuary.

The parish accounts from his tenure read as a litany of "improvements," "repairs," and "furnishings." His other contributions to beautifying the interior we see today are: replacement of the wooden floors with mosaics throughout; the marble altar rail; the baptismal font; and the installation of the church's first electric lighting.

Fr. Roth died in 1922 and, in addition to his indefatigable work on the church, school, and convent, he was a witness to the vast changes affecting the German community as a result of WWI. The last sermon and announcements from the pulpit in German were made on November 11, 1917 because of prevailing public sentiment. And because of war regulations that made it compulsory for all unnaturalized Germans to leave Washington, he was forced to leave the parish from January 1918 to January 1919.