1798 (left) and 1808 maps
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This is the first in a series of four articles about the changing geography, or better, the borders of the Archdiocese of Boston. These also focus on the Diocese of Providence, which concludes its sesquicentennial observance on June 26, 2022.
In the past several years, books with titles like "Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything about the World" and "A History of America in 100 Maps'' have appeared. Using maps as the starting or ending point, the authors create a geographical snapshot of events in history. Some are ambitious, some more modest. This series fits the more modest, at best.
Since the establishment of the Diocese of Baltimore in 1789 and to the present, the geography of the Catholic Church in the United States of America has been a history of growth, expansion, and demographic change.
Our friends in the Diocese of Providence are celebrating the sesquicentennial of the establishment of their diocese. In 1872, territory from the Diocese of Hartford, the entire state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (as it was then called) and territory from the Diocese of Boston, which is now the Diocese of Fall River, became the Providence Diocese.
1789
When the Diocese of Baltimore was established in 1789, it encompassed all the states then in existence following the American Revolution, the adoption of the Constitution, and the entrance of the new country into the family of nations.
The Roman Catholic population in the vast territory was small -- miniscule might even be the better word. They were scattered among communities up and down the Atlantic coast, with notable concentrations of Catholics in several of Maryland's municipalities, smaller ones in Philadelphia; New York; and even in Norfolk, Virgina; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia. Catholics in the four New England states (Vermont was added as the 14th state in 1791, while Maine remained part of Massachusetts until 1820) numbered about 1,000 scattered souls. Newport, Rhode Island, the home of the first Jewish synagogue in New England also had a small Catholic community, which eventually became St. Mary Parish.
Growth in the Catholic population was slow but noticeable in the new diocese. From its beginning, our first bishop, John Carroll, expressed need for an assistant and asked for a coadjutor bishop or for the diocese to be divided into more manageable units, i.e., new dioceses. He got his coadjutor but had to wait until 1808 for the proposed division to happen.
1808
The division of the diocese came in 1808 when four new dioceses were created from the Baltimore see, which was made a metropolitan archdiocese with its new Suffragan sees at Boston -- the five New England States and Maine; New York -- the whole of the Empire State and northern New Jersey; Philadelphia -- all of the Keystone State and southern New Jersey; and Bardstown in Kentucky, which would cover literally everything west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Bishop John Cheverus, as he preferred to be called, and Father Francis Matignon were the two priests for the nearly 72,000 square miles of his new diocese that stretched from the border with Canada down to Long Island Sound; with state of New York as its western border and the Atlantic Ocean its border on the east.
During the next 35 years, the diocese began to grow in numbers of Roman Catholics, mostly by immigration, initially trickles of Irish, some from French speaking Canada, and few from Catholic areas of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. These new Catholics often brought with them their own priests or their priests followed them to the United States.
When Bishop Cheverus was called back to France in 1823 to serve as bishop there (a call he was not all that anxious to accept), it was two years before a new bishop would be found for the fledgling diocese. Greatly loved by his own Catholic community, Cheverus was equally esteemed by the much larger non-Catholic community. The search for a new bishop landed a native-born citizen of the United States, coming from one of the older Catholic families of Maryland, and a member of the recently revived Society of Jesus, Bishop Benedict Joseph Fenwick. His cousin, Dominican Friar Edward Dominic Fenwick was the first bishop of Cincinnati.
The diocese already began to experience growth and Bishop Fenwick started to reach to the northern part of the diocese, establishing Catholic presence in Maine, which had become a state in 1820, with a community named after him in Benedicta. He also established a college staffed by his fellow Jesuits at Worcester -- now the College of the Holy Cross. New parishes were established across New England, often at the request of small, far-flung Catholic communities. A particularly trying time for Bishop Fenwick was the arsonist attack on the Ursuline Convent and School in Charlestown in August 1834.
The need for priests to serve the scattered communities also increased and the bishop was the vocation director for his own diocese. Immigration accelerated, especially from Ireland in the 1840s with the "Potato Famine" striking the Emerald Isle, sending millions of Irish to cities in the United States, Australia, and England. Boston was one of the cities, as were Providence, Hartford, and other New England cities.
The growth of the Church was now so evident that it was obvious, not only in New England but across the country, that the one New England diocese, its priests, growing numbers of religious women and men, and burgeoning laity and expanding institutional presence, could not be adequately served by one bishop.
FATHER ROBERT M. O'GRADY IS THE SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT OF PILOT CATHOLIC MEDIA. YOU CAN REACH HIM AT RMOGRADY@PILOTCATHOLICNEWS.COM OR 617-779-3790.