BOSTON
705
BOSTON
Mary Lob, and representatives of the Duport, Dus-
seaucoir, Dumesnil, Lepouse, and Julien families.
Bisliop Carroll went on from Baltimore to perform
the ceremony of dedication. This visit of the bishop
occasioned the greatest local satisfaction, and the
two priests continued their zealous ministrations
wnth such success that in 1805 their flock had increased
to about 500. Soon Bishop Carroll saw the necessity
of having a bishop in Boston and desired to nominate
Father Matignon for the see, but the latter refused
to allow his name to be considered. "The good
accomplished here", he \\Tote, "is almost exclusively
the work of Mr. Cheverus; he it is who fills the pulpit,
who is most frequent in the confessional." Bishop
Carroll therefore sent the name of the Rev. Jolin
Louis Cheverus to Rome declaring him to be " in
the prime of life, with health to undergo any necessarj^
exertion, uni\'ersally esteemed for his miwearied zeal
and his remarkable facility and eloquence in an-
nouncing the word of God, virtuous, and with a charm
of manner that recalled Catholics to their duties and
disarmed Protestants of their prejudices". Bishop
Cheverus was appointed 8 April, 1808, but owing
to the difficulties of communication the Bull did not
reach him for nearly two years afterwards, when he was
consecrated the first Bishop of Boston, in Baltimore,
1 November, ISIO. He then went back to Boston to
continue his simple, modest way of life. His old
friend, Father ^latignon, enjoyed honom- and the
esteem of all to the end of liis long and useful career
which came on the 18th of September, 1818.
Bi.SHOP.s. — (1) His many years of hard work at length began to tell on Bishop Cheverus and his physicians advised a return to his native land to escape repeated attacks of astlmia. In 1823 King Louis XVni of France nominated him to the vacant See of Montauban, and to the regret of all in the I'nited States he embarked for Europe, 1 October, 1823. He remained in charge at Montauban until 30 July, 1826, when he was promoted to the Arch- bishopric of Bonleaux. On 1 February he was created cardinal. He died at Bordeau.x, 19 July, 1836, in his sixty-ninth year. (See Cheverus, John Louis de.) During the administration of Bishop Cheverus the Ursuline nuns were introduced into the Diocese of Boston through the zeal of the Rev. John Tliayer, who, when on a visit to Limerick, Ireland, where he died in 1815, enlisted the sympathy of Marj' and Catharine, daughters of James Ryan of that city, in the project of founding a convent in Boston. They emigrated to Boston in 1817 and by direction of the bishop went to the Ursuline Convent at Three Rivers, Canada. They made their profession, 4 October, 1819. They returned to Boston, and a convent was secured for them on Federal Street near the cathedral. Here they re- mained until 17 July, 1826, when their new convent. Mount Benedict, Charlestown, was opened. This was the institution sacked and burned by an anti-Catholic mob on the 11th of August, 1834. Assisting in the work at the old School Street and Franklin Street churches at various times were the Rev. James Romagne, a West Indian priest, who also looked after the Indian missions in Maine, the Rev. J. S. Tis- seraud. Fathers Matthew O'Brien and F. X. Brosius, an Alsatian, who opened a school near Harvard Uni- versity and was the only teacher of German then in Boston, also the Revs. Gabriel Richard, John Grassi, S.J., Philip Lariscy, the Augustinian. and Paul Mc- Quade. In twenty years the bishop had no regular assistant. In 1817 he ordained his first ecclesiastical student, Denis Ryan, a native of Kilkenny, Ireland. In 1S20 he ordained the .second of his pupils Patrick Byrne, also from Kilkenny. In December, 1822, \'irgil Barber (.see B.vrber F.\mily) was raised to the priesthood, and to the school he opened at Clarc- vnont. New Hampshire, were sent as further recruits
for the work of the diocese James Fitton, William
Wiley, who later became successful and long-lived
pastors, and William Tyler, first Bishop of Hartford
Churches were built in Salem, South Boston, and
other places. A cemetery was purchased near Dor-
chester Heights, South Boston, and a memorial
erected there to Father Matignon. The chapel was
dedicated to St. Augustine in compliment to Father
Lariscy who collected most of the funds for the pur-
chase of the ground. There were a number of con-
verts tlirough the zeal and instruction of Bishop
Cheverus, notable among them being Thomas Walley,
who had a private chapel at his residence in Brook-
line; Dr. Henry B. C. Greene, who was elected to the
State legislature in 1841 and served for four terms,
being the first Catholic office-holder in the State;
Stephen Cleveland Blj-the, the Rev. Calvin White.
William Wiley, afterwards a priest, Mrs. John C.
Sefton, Samuel Bishop. Captain Bela Chase, Nicholas
Hazel born, the Barber family, and General Ethan
Allen's daughter Frances, who was the first nun from
New England.
(2) Benedict Joseph Fent\tck, second bishop, appointed 10 May, 1825. He was born 3 September. 1782, near Leonardstown, Maryland, Cuthbert Fen- wick, the founder of the family in America, being one of the original Catholic settlers of Lord Baltimore's colony in Marj'land. He was sent with his brother Enoch to Georgetown College in 1793, and in 1805 entered the Sulpician Seminary at Baltimore to study for the priesthood. When the Society of Jesus was restored in the United States in 1806 he and his brother were among the first scholastics received. He was ordained priest 12 March, 1808. In the suc- ceeding years he was pastor in New York, director of its first Catholic Collegiate school, administrator and vicar-general of the diocese, missionary in South Carolina, and twice president of Georgetown College. He was then named Bishop of Boston, was conse- crated in Baltimore on 1 November, 1825, and took possession of his see. 3 December. There were then only two priests in tlie diocese, the Revs. P. BjTne in Boston and D. Ryan at New Castle, Maine; and besides the cathedral only three churches. The bishop at once started a seminary in his own house and, having prepared Fathers Fitton, Wiley, Smith, Tyler, and "Thomas J. O'Flaherty, ordained them. Other students were sent to study at Rome. Paris, Baltimore, and Montreal. The Rev. John Mahony was sent to take charge at Salem; C. D. Ffrench, a Dominican, to Maine in 1826, and Robert D. Woodley to look after the scattered congregations in Rhode Island and Connecticut. In 1828 Bishop Fenwick enlarged the cathedral and began a school in the basement, which was taught by his theological students, as- sisted by Patrick Haney, a mulatto from the West Indies. The erection of new churches, the providing of more priests for the increasing number of Catholics, the promotion of Catholic education, and the regu- lation of the general discipline of the Church took up the remaining years of his life, which ended on the eleventh of August, 1846. In 1844 he was given a coadjutor, the Right Rev. John Bernard Fitzpatrick. Bishop Fenwick began, on 8 September, 1829, for the defence of the Faith, the publication of "The Jesuit, or Catholic Sentinel", one of the first Catholic papers printed in the United States. In 1843 he founded the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester and entrusted it to the Jesuits. In 1829 he attended the First Provincial Council of Baltimore. At his death Boston had about fifty churches with at- tendant priests, a college, an orphan a.sylum, and numerous schools, and a portion of its original terri- torj' — the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island — had been erected into the new Diocese of Hartford (28 November, 1843). Three Sisters of Charity from Emmitsburg, Maryland, opened the first orphan
