not completed until 1807. St. Rose Priory was named for the Dominican St. Rose of Lima, the first native of the Americas to be canonized. In February 1807 the new American Province of St. Joseph was approved. At Fenwick's request, Samuel Wilson was appointed prior. The church was dedicated December 25, 1809. St. Rose Priory was the first Catholic educational institution west of the Alleghenies. The first bishop of the new (in 1808) Diocese of Bardstown, Benedict Joseph Flaget, used the priory until the Bardstown St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral was built. Saint Thomas of Aquinas College was added later, completed in 1812. Jefferson Davis was among its earliest students. The difficulties of life as an itinerant preacher were many, not the least being exposure to extremes of weather. While riding from place to place, he read his breviary on horseback. Fenwick was known to ride forty miles out of his way to visit an isolated family. He often fasted while travelling, in anticipation of celebrating Mass once he reached his destination. Often Fenwick had to swim his horse across swollen streams to reach a mission. Frequently he was obliged while travelling, to spend the night in the Kentucky backwoods, populated by bear and wolves. The missionaries who ministered to the scattered communities on the frontier generally worked alone, and the strain of loneliness and overwork could serve to undermine their health. In 1808, Fenwick reached Ohio, where he ministered to predominantly German and Irish families, many of whom knew little English. In 1817 he was joined by his newly ordained nephew, Fr. Nicholas Dominic Young OP. The first church in Ohio, was built in Somerset and dedicated to St. Joseph on December 6, 1818. A second log church, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, was soon erected in Lancaster. A third was begun in Cincinnati, at the suggestion of Bishop Flaget, who visited the city in the spring of 1818. Episcopacy On January 13, 1822, Edward Dominic Fenwick was consecrated as the first Bishop of the Diocese of Cincinnati. The consecration was celebrated at Saint Rose Church as there was no cathedral in Cincinnati. He went to Europe in 1823 to raise funding for the new diocese and returned in 1826 with resources to begin the construction of the cathedral, parochial schools, and to found the convents of the Sisters of Charity and of the first community of Dominican women in