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 Father Charles Randolph Uncles, a native Baltimorean, and parishioner of
St. Francis Xavier, Baltimore, became the first colored seminarian to be
educated and ordained a priest in the United States.
He was ordained by Cardinal James Gibbons at the then Cathedral of the
Assumption in Baltimore in December 1891 and celebrated his first Mass
Christmas Day at St. Francis Xavier.
Charles Randolph was the son of Lorenzo and Anna Marie
(Buchanan) Uncles, who were born free and faithful Catholics. Charles
Randolph had the desire to be a priest at an early age. He dedicated himself
to acquiring an education and following the tenets of the Catholic Church.
He attended Baltimore Normal School for teachers and
taught in Baltimore County public schools. He was fluent in Latin, Greek,
and French. Father Uncles was sponsored by Father Slattery, who was the
American provincial of the Mill Hill Order, to attend St. Hyacinthe College
in Quebec, Canada. He finished his studies there with the highest grades in
his class.
In the meantime, Cardinal Herbert Vaughn, who was the
spiritual leader of the Mill Hill Order of England, arrived in America in
1871. By the latter part of 1888, Cardinal Vaughn formed St. Joseph Seminary
in Baltimore, and Father Uncles was one of the first candidates. It was here
that he received tonsure (the ceremony in which some or all of the hair is
clipped as an entrance into religious status) by Cardinal Gibbons.
Father Uncles, along with four other priests, was
instrumental in forming the Society of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, known
as the Josephites, in 1893.
From 1891-1925 Father Uncles taught mainly in Epiphany
College in Baltimore and Newburg, N.Y. While residing at Epiphany College he
fell ill and died July 21, 1933. He is buried at Calvary Cemetery, Josephite
Plot, in Newburg.
For the first time since inception in 1893, the
Josephites did not have a Black priest because Father John Dorsey, who was
fully educated and ordained in the United States in 1902, had died in 1926.
Father John Joseph Plantevigne had been ordained a Josephite in 1907 and
died in 1913.
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