Edward Fenwick
American Catholic bishop (1768–1832)
His Excellency, The Right Reverend

Edward Dominic Fenwick

O.P.
Bishop of Cincinnati
DioceseCincinnati
Appointed19 June 1821
In office1822–1833
SuccessorJohn Baptist Purcell
Orders
OrdinationFebruary 23, 1793
by Ferdinand-Marie de Lobkowitz
ConsecrationJanuary 13, 1822
by Benedict Joseph Flaget
Personal details
Born(1768-08-19)August 19, 1768
Province of Maryland, British America
DiedSeptember 26, 1832(1832-09-26) (aged 64)
Wooster, Ohio, United States

Edward Dominic Fenwick, O.P. (August 19, 1768 – September 26, 1832) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church, a Dominican priest and the first bishop of Cincinnati in Ohio. Fenwick established the first Catholic churches in both Kentucky and Ohio along with the first Dominican province in the United States.

Early life

Edward Fenwick was born on August 19, 1768, on the family plantation on the Patuxent River, in the British Province of Maryland, to Colonel Ignatius Fenwick and Sarah Taney. Colonel Fenwick later became a military officer during the American Revolution. The Fenwicks were one of the early Catholic families of Maryland, the starting point of Catholicism in the American colonies.[1]

During the mid-1700's, the Society of Jesus served the Catholic families in the province and some family members joined the order.[2]Edward's first cousin, Benedict J. Fenwick, a Jesuit priest, later became the second bishop of Boston; another cousin, Enoch Fenwick also a Jesuit priest, later became president of Georgetown College.[1]

As there were no Catholic institutions of learning in the American colonies, many wealthy Catholic families sent their sons abroad to study. The Fenwick family sent 15-year-old Edward to the Dominican Holy Cross College in Bornem, near Antwerp in what was then the Austrian Netherlands. Edward's uncle was a teacher there.[3] The school was under the jurisdiction of the English Province of Dominicans.[1]In 1788, Fenwick joined the Dominican Order and entered their seminary at Bornem as a theological student, choosing the name, "Dominic". He took his solemn vows to the Dominicans in March 1790.[4]

Priesthood

Edward Dominic Fenwick was ordained a priest in Ghent, Belgium. for the Dominical Order on February 23, 1793 by Bishop Ferdinand-Marie de Lobkowitz.[4] After his ordination, the Dominicans assigned Fenwick as a professor at the Dominican College. The next year, the French First Republic took over the Austrian Netherlands after defeating the Hapsburg Empire in battle. The French occupation forces imposed restrictions on the Catholic church and its priest. Fenwick was imprisoned, but was released after providing proof of his American citizenship. The Dominicans relocated their college Carshalton, England and Fenwick left with them. Later, Fenwick taught at a Dominican school outside London.[3]

With the assistance of Luke Concanen, assistant to the Master of the Dominican Order, Fenwick received permission from the Dominican Order to return to what was now the United States and establish a Dominican college there. He arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, in the autumn of 1804, accompanied by Brother Robert Angier. Fenwick was received by Bishop John Carroll. Carroll was bishop of the Diocese of Baltimore, which then covered the entire small Catholic population in the United States. He suggested that Fenwick and his fellow Dominicans should evangelize the new states and territories west of the Appalachian Mountains.[1]

Missionary work

In 1805, Fenwick traversed the entire Mississippi Valley, looking for a central location to serve as a headquarters for his missionary work. He was accompanied by Angier, Reverend Samuel Thomas Wilson and Reverend William Raymond Tuite.[1]Fenwick decided in 1806 to purchase a 500-acre plantation near Springfield, Kentucky. At that time, Kentucky had a small Catholic population that had migrated there during the late 18th century from Maryland. To help build this venture, Fenwick sold some enslaved African-Americans he owned at the family plantation in Maryland. He use the sale proceeds to purchase enslaved people in Kentucky, who he used to help build his community.[5]

Fenwick began construction of a priory and a church almost immediately; the buildings were first inhabited in December 1806, but not completed until 1807. St. Rose Priory was named for Rose of Lima, a Peruvian sister who was the first native of the Americas to be canonized. In February 1807, the Dominican Order approved the erection of the new American Province of St. Joseph. At Fenwick's request, Wilson was appointed prior.[6]

As an itinerant preacher visiting Catholic families in Kentucky, Kenwick faced many difficulties. He frequently had to swim his horse across swollen streams to reach a mission. On occasion, Fenwick camped out in the forests, which were then populated by bears and wolves. Like other missionaries, he faced the strain of loneliness and health problems caused by overwork and exposure to the weather. While riding from place to place, Fenwick read his breviaryHe would ride forty miles out of his way to visit an isolated family. He often fasted while travelling, in anticipation of celebrating mass once he reached his destination.[1]

In 1808, Fenwick moved on to Ohio, where he ministered to Irish and German families, many of the latter knowing little English.[7] In Kentucky, the Rose of Lima Church was dedicated on December 25, 1809. St. Rose Priory became the first Catholic educational institution west of the Allegheny Mountains. [8]In 1817, Fenwick was joined in Ohio by his newly ordained nephew, Reverend Nicholas Dominic Young, OP. The two priests built St. Joseph's Church in Somerset, the first Catholic church in Ohio, on December 6, 1818. A second log church, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, was soon erected in Lancaster. A third was begun in Cincinnati, at the suggestion of Bishop Flaget, who visited the city in the spring of 1818.[9]

Bishop of Cincinnati

Fenwick on June 19, 1821, Pope Pius VII named Fenwick as the first bishop of the new Diocese of Cincinnati. He was consecrated on January 13, 1822, at Saint Rose of Lima Church in Kentucky by Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget of the Diocese of Bardstown. In 1823, Fenwick went to Europe in 1823 to raise money for the new diocese. He petitioned Father Master Pio Maurizio Viviani, pro-general of the Dominicans in Rome, to relocated the Dominican Province from Kentucky to Ohio. Fenwick said that Ohio had good cheap agricultural land and was a free state that had banned slavery. He also asked Viviani to send him Dominican lay brothers.[10]

Fenwick returned to Cincinnati in 1826 with resources to begin the construction of as cathedral and parochial schools. To staff the schools, he founded convents in Cincinnati for the Sisters of Charity and the Dominicans of St. Catharine, the first in the United States for Dominican religious sisters.[6]In 1826, Fenwick dedicated Saint Peter's Cathedral, the first cathedral in Cincinnati.[5] In 1829. Fenwick established the St. Francis Xavier Seminary in Cincinnati. This was the third oldest Catholic seminary in the United States and the oldest Catholic seminary west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Athenaeum of Ohio-Mount St. Mary Seminary claims its roots through the St. Francis Xavier Seminary and is located in Cincinnati[11] In her book Domestic Manners of the Americans, Fanny Trollope wrote of Fenwick:

I had the pleasure of being introduced to the Catholic bishop of Cincinnati, and have never known in any country a priest of a character and bearing more truly apostolic. He was an American, but I should never have discovered it from his pronunciation or manner. He received his education partly in England, and partly in France. His manners were highly polished; his piety active and sincere, and infinitely more mild and tolerant than that of the factious Sectarians who form the great majority of the American priesthood.[12]

In 1831, Fenwick initiated publication of The Catholic Telegraph, the newspaper for the diocese. The weekly newspaper was carried by stage and riverboat within the diocese and to cities in Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The Catholic Telegraph is the oldest continuously published Catholic newspaper in the United States.[13] Also in 1831, Fenwick founded The Athenaeum, which later evolved into Xavier University and St. Xavier High School.[14] After 1831, Fenwick returned to missionary work, visiting Native American tribes in the American Midwest.

Death

Stricken by cholera, Fenwick died in Wooster, Ohio, on September 26, 1832, at age 64.[4] He is buried in a mausoleum in the St. Joseph Cemetery in Delhi Township, Ohio.

Legacy

Several schools are named in his honor:

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f O'Daniel, V. F. (Victor Francis) (1920). The Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick, O. P. : founder of the Dominicans in the United States, pioneer missionary in Kentucky, apostle of Ohio, first bishop of Cincinnati. Kelly - University of Toronto. Washington, D.C. : The Dominicana.
  2. ^ Corrigan, Mary Beth (August 23, 2020). "Institutional History of the Maryland Province" (PDF). Georgetown University. Retrieved December 26, 2025.
  3. ^ a b "The Apostle of Ohio: Bishop Edward Fenwick, O.P." www.patheos.com. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  4. ^ a b c "Bishop Edward Dominic Fenwick [Catholic-Hierarchy]". www.catholic-hierarchy.org. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  5. ^ a b Ryckbost, Anne. "LibGuides: Fenwick History: Who was Edward Fenwick?". libguides.xavier.edu. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  6. ^ a b "Petit OP, Loretta. "Friar in the Wilderness", Project OPUS, Chicago, 1994". Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2014-10-06.
  7. ^ Edward Dominic Fenwick Papers 1803—1832: Founding American Dominican Friar and Bishop, ed. Luke Tancrell, OP (New York: Dominican Publications, 2005), pp. 145–146.
  8. ^ Ryckbost, Anne. "LibGuides: Fenwick History: Summary". libguides.xavier.edu. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  9. ^ Lamott, S.T.D., John H., History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, (1921)
  10. ^ Fenwick, Edward (October 11, 1823). "Letter To His Most Reverend Paternity, Father Master Pio Maurizio Viviani, Pro-Vicar General of Preachers". Xavier University. Retrieved December 26, 2025.
  11. ^ "History - Athenaeum of Ohio". Athenaeum of Ohio. Archived from the original on 2023-06-13. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  12. ^ Trollope, Fanny, Domestic Manners of the Americans, Ch. 11.
  13. ^ "About Us". Catholic Telegraph. 2025-12-26. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  14. ^ "Brief History - St. Xavier High School". www.stxavier.org. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  15. ^ "History | Bishop Fenwick High School". Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  16. ^ "History Fenwick High School". www.fenwickfriars.com. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
  17. ^ Diamond, Brian. "Bishop Fenwick Catholic School | Zanesville Ohio". www.bishop-fenwick.com. Retrieved 2025-12-26.

References

  1. Lamott, S.T.D., John H., History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, (1921)
Wikiquote has quotations related to Edward Dominic Fenwick.
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  • Bio of Edward Fenwick
  • History of St Rose Priory
  • History of the Athenaeum of Ohio
  • Episcopal lineage of Bishop Edward Dominic Fenwick, O.P.
  • Fenwick High School (Franklin, Ohio)
  • Fenwick High School (Oak Park, Illinois)
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