Maryland priest

The American Revolutionary War created tremendous conflicts within the Church of England in the Thirteen Colonies. The clergy, who had been ordained in England, had taken an oath of allegiance to the king. Soon after the Declaration of Independence, the clergy were required to sign an "Oath of Fidelity", which none felt they could sign without violating their ordination vows.^[6]: 30 Nine of the clergy gave up their congregations and returned to England, six moved to Virginia, one to Pennsylvania, one to Delaware, five retired to their estates, and two or three others took up teaching. Starting July 4, 1776, Congress and several newly independent states passed laws making prayers for the king and British Parliament acts of treason.^[7] By 1779 the numbers of Anglican clergy in the area dwindled from 53 to just 15. Divisions and conflict arose among largely "loyalist" clergy and overwhelmingly "patriot" parishioners.^[8]

Claggett avoided the conflict, retiring as rector and living on his estate of Croom in Prince George's County for two years. In 1778, he began officiating in his local home parish at St. Paul's, in Baden, of Prince George's County where he became rector on August 7, 1780, succeeding to the office after the death of his uncle, Rev. Dr. John Eversfield. Rev. Claggett remained there until 1786.^[6]: 30 Due to the severe shortage of priests after disestablishment, Rev. Claggett was also the second rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Guilford, Maryland from 1781 to 1782. In 1786, Rev. Claggett accepted the rectorship at St. James' Church (formerly Herring Creeke Church) at Tracy's Landing (now near Lothian) in Anne Arundel County.

Organization of American Church

Following the Revolutionary War, the Rev. William Smith was elected bishop of the Maryland diocese, but the Bishop of London refused to consecrate Smith. Unable to obtain consecration of their clergy from the Church of England, representatives from nine dioceses already organized met in Philadelphia in 1789 to form an independent Anglican church in America and to ratify a constitution for its governance.

In 1789 the Anglican congregations in nine states adopted the name of the "Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America" as their name and formally separated themselves from the Church of England. Using the term "Episcopal" emphasized their belief and usage of the historical succession by the "laying-on-of-hands" of the "Episcopacy" and the "episcopate" rather than the descriptive term "Anglican" which emphasized their English origins and the mother church of the Church of England, much like the Scottish Episcopal Church from which the American church's first bishop, Samuel Seabury was consecrated.

The American Episcopal Church was incorporated as "the first Anglican Province outside the British Isles." At the time, in 1783, there were 47 parishes and about 38 clergy in the new first Diocese.^[8]

New capital city

The first priest (presbyter) that Bishop Claggett ordained was the Rev. Walter Dulaney Addison, who first served in Queen Anne Parish in Upper Marlboro, Maryland from 1793 to 1795 (succeeding his Tory uncle, Rev. Jonathan Boucher who had returned to England as well as financed his nephew's education), then became rector of King George's Parish succeeding Rev. Henry T. Addison. This parish included not only the Addison family's traditional estates near Oxon Hill, Maryland and much of Prince George's County, Maryland but also a few Episcopalian families the new District of Columbia. Thus, Rev. Walter D. Addison periodically held services in what soon became Rock Creek Church as well as in the local Presbyterian Church on "M" Street through the hospitality of the minister, the Rev. Stephen B. Balch. From this, Georgetown Parish formed in 1809 and St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square in 1815. Bishop Claggett and Rev. Walter Addison also became mentors of several important Episcopal priests in the new capital area, including Rev. William Holland Wilmer and future bishop William Meade in Alexandria, Virginia.

Bishop Claggett was among the first to envision the need for a national Episcopal Church in the nation's new capital and "Federal City", now often being referred to as "Washington City", after the first new president in 1793, as the town was being laid out. While presiding over his Diocesan convention that year, Claggett appointed a committee to study the idea. He had an ally in Joseph Nourse, the country's First Registrar of the Treasury. However, Nourse did not want the cathedral in downtown Washington, but even then foresaw the beautiful dominating hill-top of Mount Alban to the northwest overlooking the new rough city and the Potomac River valley. After years of controversy and discussion with debates about its location, construction of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Washington National Cathedral on Mount Saint Alban was eventually begun in 1897, and mostly completed by the 1980s, testifying to its founders' and visionaries' original conceptions. Memorial slabs recognizing Bishop Claggett and his wife are mounted in the basement outside the chapel dedicated to St. Joseph of Arimathea.

United States Senate chaplain

On November 27, 1800, the United States Senate at its first session in the new north (Senate) wing, of a barely serviceable Capitol building selected the Right Reverend Claggett as its third chaplain. He gave the opening prayer, the first offered in the new Capitol in Washington D.C. He served through the end of the session.^[9]

His first group of confirmations, a class of forty-four, took place in 1793 at St. John's Church at Broad Creek, near today's Fort Washington overlooking the Potomac River, in Prince George's County a few months after his consecration, and were presented by the then third rector, the Rev. Joseph Messenger.

Trinity Episcopal Church

Memorial in St. Thomas Church to Thomas John Claggett.

In 1810, members of the church in Upper Marlboro, Maryland founded Trinity Episcopal Church so they could worship near their homes. The nearest existing Anglican churches were St. Thomas Church in Upper Marlboro and St. Barnabas' Church in Leeland, both long carriage rides over rough and often impassible roads.

On August 13, 1810, the newly formed Trinity Church Vestry elected the Right Rev. Thomas John Claggett as the first rector. He organized the congregation in an abandoned wooden Presbyterian building built 106 years earlier in 1704. During the War of 1812, notes from the vestry minutes of May 1814 describe British troops camping in the church and preventing the Vestry from meeting. Rev. Clagget served as the congregation's rector until his death on August 3, 1816.^[6][10]

Other congregations

On October 16, 1811, Rt. Rev. Claggett consecrated the replacement structure at Christ Church, also known as the "Old Brick Church", in Queen Caroline Parish, western Anne Arundel County (now town/city of Columbia in Howard County).^[11] On January 9, 1814, due to Bishop Madison's death without a successor, Bishop Claggett consecrated a rebuilt Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia (home parish of General and President George Washington, (1732-1799)).^[12]

An assistant bishop, James Kemp was appointed to assist Bishop Claggett in 1814, and succeeded him two years later. Bishop Claggett published a few sermons, pastoral letters, and addresses to his convention.^[3]