Fort Vincennes with George Rogers Clark. They reached the fort on December 21, 1792. At Vincennes, in addition to his pastoral work, Flaget founded a school and library in the church (now the Old Cathedral and Library), the oldest educational institutions in Indiana. At Vincennes he ministered to the Catholics at the small parish. Here also he nursed the sick when in 1793 smallpox broke out among the settlers and the nearby Miami tribe. Flaget himself became ill, but recovered. Flaget was recalled by his superiors to Baltimore and on April 23, 1795 traveled to Kaskaskia and then down the river to New Orleans and from there sailed to Baltimore. He taught geography and French at Georgetown College for the next three years. One of his students was the future bishop of Boston, Benedict Joseph Fenwick. Flaget left Baltimore with two colleagues in 1798 bound for Cuba as part of a Sulpician mission to establish a college on that island. They were met with opposition from the local diocesan administrators, however, and were not able to celebrate Mass in Havana. During that stay, he contracted yellow fever and was left behind when the other Sulpicians decided to return to the United States. He recovered and acted as a tutor to the son of a wealthy Spaniard. Later, after the death of the Archbishop of Havana, the Dean of the Cathedral granted him permission to celebrate Mass at the church of the Capuchin friars. Flaget learned Spanish during his stay. While he was in Cuba, Louis Phillippe of France and his two brothers had arrived there on their journey in exile. The refugee aristocrats were befriended by their fellow Frenchman, Flaget, in 1800. This was a kindness which Louis Phillippe remembered and returned when he later ascended the throne of France as King. Flaget returned to Baltimore in November 1801. He brought with him 23 young Spaniards whom he had recruited to study at Georgetown College. He then spent the next several years in various posts at that school. In 1821 he started on a visitation of Tennessee, and bought property in Nashville for the first Catholic church. Flaget conducted the first Catholic mass in Nashville, Tennessee at the home of Revolutionary War Patriot and Commissioned Officer, Captain Timothy Demonbreun. Bishop Flaget was appointed by the Holy See as the first Bishop of the newly established Diocese of Bardstown on April