of the Diocese of Nashville by Pope Pius IX on June 7, 1865. He was consecrated bishop by Archbishop Kendrick on November 12, 1865. During the summer and fall of 1866 he worked to relieve the suffering of those suffering from an outbreak of cholera. In October 1866, he took part in the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. The diocese was hard hit by bank closures and the depression of 1873. To help his parishioners, Feehan encouraged a group of men to create a fraternal organization that would be known as Catholic Knights of America.In 1877 and 1878, the diocese suffered yellow fever outbreaks, resulting in the deaths of 13 religious sisters and nine priests, including the vicar-general. Archbishop of Chicago On September 10, 1880, Feehan was appointed as the first archbishop of the new Archdiocese of Chicago by Pope Leo XIII. From 1880 to 1902, the Catholic population of Chicago nearly quadrupled, to 800,000, largely due to the arrival of immigrants. In adding to the Irish and German communities already established, Polish, Bohemian, French, Lithuanian, Italian, Croatian, Slovak and Dutch Catholics brought their own unique cultural traditions. Feehan preferred to keep a low profile; relatively few speeches and sermons exist from his 22-year tenure. Chicago was still feeling the effects of the Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed many of the schools and churches. Feehan accommodated these diverse needs by creating parishes to serve ethnic communities and recruited religious orders from their home countries to staff them. Of the 140 parishes he founded, 52 percent served a particular ethnic community. According to Rev. Martin Zielinski, an associate professor of Catholic history at Mundelein Seminary, the parishes provided a place where immigrants could find familiar fraternal organizations, music, and language. They served as a haven from xenophobia and hostility directed toward immigrants and Catholics. Feehan was a strong supporter of Catholic education, and promoted it at the exhibition at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago "Archbishop Feehan believed a strong system of Catholic education would solve the problem of inconsistent religious instruction at home, and unify a rapidly diversifying Catholic America." He also brought the Vincentians to Chicago to start what is now DePaul University. Epidemics of cholera and yellow fever in Chicago left dozens of orphans. In 1881, Feehan established the St. Vincent Orphan Asylum, and in 1883 St. Mary's Training School for Boys, a trade school for