Edward Fenwick

Edward Dominic Fenwick, (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.

During the mid-1700's, the Society of Jesus served the Catholic families in the province and some family members joined the order. 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. The school was under the jurisdiction of the English Province of Dominicans. 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 priests. Fenwick was imprisoned, but was released after providing proof of his American citizenship. The Dominicans relocated their college to Carshalton, England and Fenwick left with them. Later, Fenwick taught at a Dominican school outside London.

Fenwick began construction of a priory and a church almost immediately; the buildings were first inhabited in December 1806, but not completed until 1807. Saint 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 Saint Joseph. At Fenwick's request, Wilson was appointed prior.

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 prayed his Breviary, often fasting in anticipation of celebrating Mass once he reached his destination. He would ride forty miles out of his way to visit an isolated family. In Kentucky, the Saint Rose of Lima Church was dedicated on December 25, 1809, and the Saint Rose Priory became the first Catholic educational institution west of the Allegheny Mountains. In 1817, Fenwick was joined in Ohio by his newly ordained nephew, Reverend Nicholas Dominic Young, OP. The two priests built Saint 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.

Bishop of Cincinnati 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 relocate 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.

Fenwick returned to Cincinnati in 1826 with resources to begin the construction of cathedral and parochial schools. To staff the schools, he founded convents in Cincinnati for the Sisters of Charity and the Dominicans of Saint Catharine, the first in the United States for Dominican religious sisters. 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.

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. Also in 1831, Fenwick founded The Athenaeum, which later evolved into Xavier University and Saint Xavier High School. 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. Fenwick High School, Oak Park, Illinois Fenwick High School, Lancaster, Ohio (now the William V. Fisher Catholic High School) Bishop Fenwick Middle School, Zanesville, Ohio