Well, I can’t give you exact dates, but I hope I can give you some basic timeframes that will help you look for sources.
Early-mid 1600s: Lord Baltimore colonizes Maryland. The Catholic-controlled ruling body of the colony passes an Act of Toleration, allowing freedom for all Christians to practice their religion. I may be mistaken, but I once heard that this was one of, if not the first example of such a policy.
1600-1700s: Massachusetts. “Pope Day” celebrated. The Pope is mocked in effigy. General George Washington, when he was leading the Continental Army in the vicinity of Boston, strongly discouraged his soldiers from engaging in the “festivities”
1700s-1800s: (completely fictional) books, most notably The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk are published, alleging that convents were brothels for priests and that tyhe babies from such unions-along with any disobedient nuns- were buried under the cellar. Mobs formed from time to time and raided the Catholic schools and other buildings, looking for signs of these alleged atrocities. No proof was ever found, but the rumors thrived anyway.
1850s- The “Know-Nothing” Party forms. Strongly nativist and very paranoid about “foreigners”- especially the Irish and German Catholics, who had been coming to the U.S. in large numbers.
1856- John C. Fremont runs for President, nominated by the Republican party. His campaign is somewhat hindered by the fact that Fremont’s wife is Catholic.
1920s- Klu Klux Klan re-forms, preaching an anti-foreign, anti-black, and anti-Catholic message.
1928- Al Smith, the former governor of New York, runs for the Presidency. A Catholic, he is accused of all sorts of things. It is alleged that Smith will take all his orders from the Pope, and paranoia runs so high that a rumor circulates that the newly completed Lincoln Tunnel in New York City contained a secret tunnel to the Vatican. Smith loses the campaign.
1960- John F. Kennedy runs successfully for President, though he is accused of many of the same absurdities as Smith was accused of.
Though perhaps more important that the individual events are the causes of the fear; in early colonial days, Catholics were feared partly because of the failed “Gunpowder Plot”. Catholics had been suffering persecution in England for years beforehand, and a procalmation had come from Rome that Catholics were absolved of their obligation to obey the British government- Catholics were feared as subversive and dangerous.
The later outbursts of anti-Catholic sentiment coincide with increasing numbers of Catholic immigrants. In the 1700s, many Irish immigrants arrived, especially in Boston. In the early 1800s, many Catholic and German immigrants arrived in Eastern cities. Their customs (which involve no small amounts of beer and/or whiskey) would serve in no small part to motivate Prohibition. In the 1920s, many immigrants from war-tron Europe, many of whom were Catholic, were arriving in New York and other ports.
But make sure you can find reliable sources for these. Some of this, I’m not very sure of.
