St. Joseph’s Catholic Church

C&A is proud to support St. Joseph’s Catholic Church’s work in the community through their bulletin every Sunday. They have a history of serving the Sykesville area for over 150 years.

The first definite plans to form a Catholic congregation in Sykesville were made in 1852. Several hundred Catholic families had settled in the county. The Jesuits, who came from Frederick on horseback and the Sulpicians, who had established St. Charles Preparatory College eight miles south of Sykesville, occasionally offered Mass and administered the sacraments at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Orrelana H. Owings. After St. Joseph’s first pastor, the Right Rev. Msgr. Barnard McManus, left in 1853 to erect St. John’s Church in Baltimore, the pastors from St. Paul’s in Ellicott City tended to the needs of the people in this little mission church.

In 1864, Archbishop Martin John Spalding decided to erect several church buildings in the archdiocese. One of these was St. Joseph’s in Sykesville. On September 9, 1865 Dr. and Mrs. Owings donated the ground for the church building to the archdiocese. In August 1867, the cornerstone of the first Sykesville church building (now at the corner of Main and Sandosky Streets), was laid.

Read more about their long history here.