with power to give the sacrament of confirmation. This act established a hierarchy in the United States and removed the Catholic Church in the U.S. from the authority of the vicar apostolic of the London District. Maryland being one of the few regions of the colonial United States with a substantial Roman Catholic population, Pope Pius VI proceeded to erect the Prefecture Apostolic of the United States encompassing the entire territory of the United States, with its see in Baltimore, and appointed Fr. Carroll as the first Prefect Apostolic on November 26, 1784. The same pope erected the Diocese of Baltimore, the first diocese in the United States, in the territory of the prefecture apostolic on November 6, 1789. In 1790, Father Carroll traveled to England where he was ordained and consecrated as a bishop in Lulworth Castle in Dorset, by Bishop Charles Walmesley, O.S.B. Carroll subsequently ordained the first American-born Catholic priest, William Matthews, at St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral in the Diocese of Baltimore in 1800. On April 8, 1808, Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Boston, the Diocese of New York, the Diocese of Philadelphia, and the Diocese of Bardstown in Bardstown, Kentucky, taking their territory from the Diocese of Baltimore. He simultaneously elevated the Diocese of Baltimore to a metropolitan archdiocese, designating the four new dioceses as its suffragan sees. The archdiocese continued to lose territory through the 19th century as the church evolved and grew in the United States. Pope Pius VII erected of the Diocese of Charleston (encompassing the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia) and the Diocese of Richmond (encompassing the state of Virginia except two counties of the Eastern Shore region) on July 11, 1820;, making both dioceses additional suffragans of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Pope Gregory XVI erected the Vicariate Apostolic of the Oregon Territory, taking its territory from the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Archdiocese of Quebec and making it an additional suffragan of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, on December 1, 1843. The federal government having retroceded the city of Alexandria from the District of Columbia to Virginia in 1846, Pope Pius IX transferred that territory from the Archdiocese of Baltimore to the Diocese of Richmond on August 15, 1858. Pope Pius IX also erected the Diocese of Wilmington (Delaware), taking the state of Delaware and the Eastern Shore region of Maryland and Virginia from the Archdiocese of Baltimore