Welcome to the website for Santa Maria Council. Located in the heart of Vienna, Virginia, we proudly hail from the parishes of Our Lady of Good Counsel and St. Mark as well as a few others.  The Knights of Columbus is an international service organization of Catholic men.  To learn more, please go to http://www.kofc.org.  

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History of Our Council and Hall. Our council hall (pictured) is a historic and recognizable building in Vienna, Virginia.  The following was researched and written by Brother Vito Florimonte around the time of our particular council's 50th Anniversary, September 11, 2008.

There are several historical threads that are spinning together just a few years apart that neatly frame our council’s history and provide an interesting segue to our founding date and the development of our council home as we know it today. It begins around the end of the Civil War with Major Orrin T. Hine.

He was an Army officer who had amassed large real estate holdings [about 6500 acres] in the Vienna/ Oakton area according to Town of Vienna  history. Major Hine would later become the first Mayor of Vienna in 1890 when it incorporated. At the end of the war Major Hine was sympathetic to the black soldiers under his command and attempted to help them establish their own church,  by deeding to them 1/10 of an acre and giving them access to lumber-salvage used to build Army barracks no longer needed after the war. There were also large timbers salvaged from an abandoned train trestle which are visible as the roof rafters of our building.

The good Major deeded the property to the Baptist congregation with the stipulation that the church would own the land until and if it disbanded at which time the land would revert to the Major’s heirs. In 1958 the church dissolved and the building and land were legally released from the original covenant.

During this time Edward Douglas White Council in Arlington was the largest council in Northern Virginia. Several of the EDW-Vienna knights decided to separate from EDW and form a new council in Vienna and thus  Council 4654, Santa Maria Council was established

These founding members purchased the land and building from the heirs of Major/Mayor Hine. The recorded date of this charter according to records in  New Haven, Conn.is 11 September 1958.

The Town of Vienna recognizes the building as a historic site and presented a bronze plaque to permanently mark the site. Brother Al Boudreau , a Vienna councilman was instrumental in making this happen.