Cradle of the Faith

1968: “Father Adrian L. Dionne, O.P., prior of St. Joseph's Priory, near Somerset, looks at a replica of a log cabin church erected in the Ohio wilderness 150 years ago. It was the first Catholic church in the state. The replica was built by Marshal Fitzpatrick, Worthington.”

Pioneer Ohio Church Built By Settlers 150 Years Ago

“Ohio's first Catholic church, St. Joseph's near Somerset in Perry County, is celebrating its sesquicentennial.

“Catholicism came to the area that now is the State of Ohio long before the American Revolution, perhaps as early as 1650. In the century before the American colonists began their struggle for independence, Jesuit missionaries from France preached to the Indians in the wilderness between the Ohio River and Lake Erie. And in 1790, a Benedictine priest was a member of the short-lived settlement of French Catholics at Gallipolis. Those pioneers never built a church.

“It was in 1818 that Father Edward Dominic Fenwick, O.P., who several years later was to become first bishop of Cincinnati, blessed the first Catholic church in Ohio, St. Joseph's, a log cabin measuring only 22 feet by 18 feet and serving a group of six scattered families near Somerset.

“Father Fenwick, who also was the first Dominican provincial in America, had visited the area 10 years earlier. He had come in the name of Bishop John Carroll of the Baltimore diocese, the only diocese in the country at the time. For several years, Jacob Dittoe, a pioneer settler and a devout Catholic, had been writing to the bishop asking for the services of a priest and giving directions to the Catholic settlement. Father Fenwick offered Mass in Dittoe's cabin in 1808 after a long journey on horseback through the wilderness from his station in Kentucky.

“The Dittoe home later became Fenwick's base from which he made trips throughout Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania and MIchigan.

“Jacob Dittoe soon purchased 320 acres of land and deeded it to Father Fenwick as the site for a church and future priory. The church was completed by the settlers in 1818 while the priest was in Kentucky attending the ordination of his nephew, Father Nicholas Young. He and Father Young came to St. Joseph's together and settled in a log cabin that had been built as a companion piece to the new church.

“When Fenwick was made Bishop of Cincinnati in 1821, the burden of tending St. Joseph's parish, which then was expanding rapidly, fell on the shoulders of Father Young. The log cabin church was replaced by a second church in 1829. The present church was erected in 1843 and rebuilt after a fire in 1864.

“Some distinguished families in American history have been members of historic St. Joseph's parish, among them the Ewings, who figured prominently in 19th Century politics; the Sheridans and Shermans of Civil War fame; the Creighton family, whose name was taken by a Catholic university; and the Magruders, whose members achieved distinction in early U.S. journalism and medicine.

“A history of the Perry County church, Cradle of Faith in Ohio, written by Father R.E. Brennan, O.P., was published in booklet form in 1963.” (See The Catholic Telegraph, April 25, 1968)