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Enoch Fenwick

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Enoch Fenwick SJ (May 15, 1780 – November 25, 1827) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who ministered throughout Maryland and became the twelfth president of Georgetown College. Descending from one of the original Catholic settlers of the Province of Maryland, he studied at Georgetown College in Georgetown, (now Washington), D.C. Like his brother and future bishop, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, he entered the priesthood, studying at St. Mary's Seminary before entering the Society of Jesus, which was suppressed at the time. He was made rector of St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral in Baltimore by Archbishop John Carroll, and remained in the position for ten years. Near the end of his pastorate, he was also made vicar general of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which involved traveling to say Mass in remote parishes throughout rural Maryland.

The Reverend

Enoch Fenwick

12th President of Georgetown College

In office

1820–1825

Preceded by

Anthony Kohlmann

Succeeded by

Benedict Joseph Fenwick

Personal details

Born

May 15, 1780

St. Mary's County, Maryland, U.S.

Died

November 25, 1827 (aged 47)

Georgetown, D.C.,[a] U.S.

Resting place

Jesuit Community Cemetery

Relations

Benedict Fenwick (brother)

Alma mater

Georgetown College

St. Mary's Seminary

Orders

Ordination

March 12, 1808

by Leonard Neale

In 1820, Fenwick reluctantly accepted his appointment as president of Georgetown College. While he made some improvements to the curriculum, contemporaries generally considered his presidency unsuccessful due to declining enrollment and mounting debt. In August 1825, he abandoned the presidency following a disagreement with the provincial superior. Two years later, he died at Georgetown.

Early life

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Enoch Fenwick was born on May 15, 1780, in St. Mary's County, Maryland. He was one of four brothers, three of whom would become priests.[2] He descended from one of the original Catholic settlers of the Maryland Province,[3] Cuthbert Fenwick.[4] One of his brothers was Benedict Joseph Fenwick,[5] who became the Bishop of Boston and a president of Georgetown College.[6] Another brother, George Fenwick, also entered the priesthood, while another brother did not enter religious life.[7]

Fenwick enrolled at Georgetown College in 1793, which he attended until 1797.[8] The president, Louis William Valentine DuBourg, identified him as the best student in the college, and appointed him in 1797 to teach rudiments to the young students in the lower school.[3] He then entered St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore in 1805. The following year, he entered the Society of Jesus on October 10,[9] becoming a member of the first class in the Jesuit novitiate at Georgetown,[3] and one of four[b] who were the first Jesuits ordained priests in the United States.[6]

As the Jesuit order had been officially suppressed by Pope Clement XIV,[11] Fenwick was admitted to the Corporation of Catholic Clergymen,[12] the civil corporation that sought to preserve the Society and its property until its restoration by Pope Pius VII in 1815.[11] He was ordained a priest on March 12, 1808, in Georgetown,[13] by Bishop Leonard Neale.[14]

Ministry in Baltimore

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Following his ordination, he was made the assistant to the Archbishop of Baltimore, John Carroll.[15] Upon the death of Francis Beeston in 1809,[10] Fenwick was appointed by Carroll as rector of St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral in Baltimore, where he raised money for the construction of a new St. Peter's church building.[16] He oversaw work that began in 1806 and continued until 1812,[17] before being halted by the War of 1812.[15] Construction resumed in 1815, and was completed in 1821.[17] Fenwick held the position of rector until 1820, when he was succeeded by James Whitfield.[18] From 1809 to 1815, he also served on the board of directors of Georgetown College.[19]

Simultaneous with his rectorship, he became vicar general for the Archdiocese of Baltimore in 1819.[15] In this position he served as chaplain in Port Tobacco, Maryland, where he said Mass every other Sunday. He was also required to travel to three other parishes throughout Charles County (in Lower Zacchia, Upper Zacchia, and Pomfret) every other Sunday, because they had been abandoned by a priest who returned to England.[20]

He was considered on several occasions for being raised to the episcopate, specifically as Bishop of Louisiana and the Two Floridas or Bishop of Detroit.[21] He was also considered by Bishop Edward Fenwick for being made the coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Cincinnati.[22]

Georgetown College

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The Jesuit visitor to the United States, Peter Kenney, recommended to Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore that Fenwick be appointed president of Georgetown College in the summer of 1820.[5] This recommendation heeded, he was informed that he would be named to the office in August of that year,[3] and his term officially began on September 16, 1820.[23] He assumed the office very reluctantly from Anthony Kohlmann, who quit the presidency to establish the Washington Seminary.[24] Resenting his transfer from the cathedral in Baltimore to Georgetown, Fenwick viewed the college as having "one foot in the grave of disgrace" and little prospect for recovery.[3]

Georgetown University campus in 1828

The campus of Georgetown College shortly after the end of Enoch Fenwick's presidency

Fenwick undertook several reforms of the curriculum. He divided the year into two semesters, and definitively prescribed the course of study as including one class of rudiments, three in grammar, one in humanities, and one in rhetoric. Each professor also taught Ancient Greek, French, Latin, and English in their classes.[25] The first college journal, called The Minerva, was also circulated. Printing presses were not available to the school, so it was written in manuscript form, and lasted for only a few issues.[26] The college's library saw substantial growth during his tenure, and he personally donated a number of books.[27]

Despite these reforms, Fenwick's administration of the college was evaluated by Stephen Larigaurdelle Dubuisson, a subsequent president of Georgetown, as "wretched".[28] The size of the student body declined, due to the opening of Columbian College and the Washington Seminary nearby, and the college's debts grew, as he viewed pursuing parents for overdue tuition and board distasteful during the economic recession. The reputation of the school suffered due to this.[29] Fenwick attempted to offset this decline by publishing a new prospectus and placing advertisements in newspapers.[23] His administration was markedly hands-off, as he allowed the prefect of studies, Roger Baxter, to manage most of the affairs of the school. Baxter was known for his liberal attitude toward student discipline and in his own consumption of alcohol and alleged unaccompanied visitation of women in the City of Washington;[29] Baxter was later deported to Europe by the provincial superior, Francis Dzierozynski.[30]

On March 10, 1824, Ann Carbery Mattingly, the sister of Mayor Thomas Carbery of Washington, D.C., was apparently cured of terminal breast cancer after being delivered a Eucharist by Dubuisson, then a priest at St. Patrick's Church, in conjunction with the prayers of Prince Alexander of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst in Germany. News of the event spread quickly throughout the city and the cure was promoted as a miracle by Dubuisson and Kohlmann.[31] Meanwhile, an anonymous letter was published in the National Intelligencer in April denouncing the legitimacy of the miracle and sharply criticizing Kohlmann. It was immediately suspected that the author of the letter was Thomas Levins, an Irish Jesuit professor at Georgetown. Dzierozynski demanded an explanation from Levins and Levins's superior, Fenwick, but both refused to answer. In October 1824, a series of even harsher letters was published, and Levins was expelled from the Society of Jesus by the Jesuit Superior General, Luigi Fortis, in January 1825.[30]

After being confronted by Dzierozynski, Fenwick left the college in August 1825 for St. Thomas Manor in Maryland and – although he had not officially resigned the presidency – refused to return to Georgetown.[32] This effectively left Dzierozynski, who spoke little English and was unfamiliar with American ways, in charge of the school.[28] Fenwick was officially replaced by his brother, Benedict, on September 15, 1825,[32] who resumed the office in an acting capacity.[33] Fenwick died on November 25, 1827, at Georgetown College, and was buried in the Jesuit Community Cemetery.[4]

Notes

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Georgetown was a separately chartered city within the District of Columbia until the consolidation of the district's governments into a single entity, Washington, D.C., with the Organic Act of 1871.[1]

The other three ordained alongside Fenwick were Benedict Fenwick, Leonard Edelen, and James Spink.[10]

References

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Citations

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Dodd 1909, p. 40

Buckley 2013, p. 100

Curran 1993, p. 92

Historical Records and Studies 1909, p. 385

Curran 1993, p. 90

Devitt 1909, p. 31

McLaughlin 1899, p. 141

Curran 1993, p. 40

Catalogue of the Maryland Mission 1886, p. 189

Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 1911, p. 252

Curran 2012, pp. 14–16

Hughes 2009, p. 872

Ryan 1903, p. 197

Shea 1891, p. 61

Ryan 1903, p. 203

Easby-Smith 1907, p. 58

Historical Records and Studies 1909, p. 386

The Catholic Church in the United States of America 1914, p. 59

Curran 1993, p. 402

Hughes 2009, p. 956

O'Daniel 1920, p. 275

O'Daniel 1920, p. 304

Shea 1891, p. 58

Buckley 2013, p. 94

Easby-Smith 1907, p. 97

Shea 1891, p. 59

"History of the Georgetown University Library". Georgetown University Library. Archived from the original on July 4, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2019.

Buckley 2013, p. 110

Curran 1993, p. 93

Curran 1993, p. 97

Curran 1993, p. 96

Curran 1993, p. 98

Curran 1993, p. 404

Sources

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The Catholic Church in the United States of America: Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X. New York: Catholic Editing Company. 1914. OCLC 976946591. Archived from the original on September 20, 2019. Retrieved September 20, 2019 – via Google Books.

Buckley, Cornelius Michael (2013). Stephen Larigaudelle Dubuisson, S.J. (1786–1864) and the Reform of the American Jesuits. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0761862321. Archived from the original on June 22, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019 – via Google Books.

"Catalogue of the Maryland Mission for 1818–1819". Woodstock Letters. XV (2): 188–189. July 1, 1886. Archived from the original on September 19, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019 – via Jesuit Online Library.

Curran, Robert Emmett (1993). The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University: From Academy to University, 1789–1889. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 978-0878404858. Archived from the original on July 7, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Google Books.

Curran, Robert Emmett (2012). "Ambrose Maréchal, the Jesuits, and the Demise of Ecclesial Republicanism in Maryland, 1818–1838". Shaping American Catholicism: Maryland and New York, 1805–1915. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. pp. 13–158. ISBN 978-0813219677. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018. Retrieved September 20, 2019.

Devitt, Edward I. (1909). "Georgetown College in the Early Days". Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 12: 21–37. JSTOR 40066991.

Dodd, Walter Farleigh (1909). The Government of the District of Columbia: A Study in Federal and Municipal Administration. Washington, D.C.: John Byrne & Co. p. 40. OCLC 2485653. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Internet Archive.

Easby-Smith, James Stanislaus (1907). Georgetown University in the District of Columbia, 1789–1907. Vol. 1. New York: Lewis Publishing Company. OCLC 633425041. Archived from the original on July 7, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Google Books.

Historical Records and Studies. Vol. 5. New York: United States Catholic Historical Society. 1909. OCLC 301344701. Archived from the original on September 19, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2019 – via Google Books.

Hughes, Thomas (2009) [First published in 1908]. History of the Society of Jesus in North America: Colonial and Federal. American Philosophy and Religion Series. Vol. 1. Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books. ISBN 978-1429018333. Archived from the original on July 7, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Google Books.

McLaughlin, J. Fairfax (1899). College Days at Georgetown, and Other Papers. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. p. 141. OCLC 1299424. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Internet Archive.

O'Daniel, V. F. (1920). The Right Rev. Edward Dominic Fenwick (PDF). Washington, D.C.: The Dominicana. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 13, 2017. Retrieved September 19, 2019.

Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. Vol. XXII. Philadelphia: American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. 1911. Archived from the original on September 19, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019 – via Google Books.

Ryan, John J. (December 1, 1903). "Our Scholasticate – An Account of Its Growth and History to the Opening of Woodstock, 1805–1869". Woodstock Letters. XXXII (2): 203–209. Archived from the original on July 7, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Jesuit Online Library.

Shea, John Gilmary (1891). "Chapter XI: Father Enoch Fenwick, S.J.". Memorial of the First Century of Georgetown College, D.C.: Comprising a History of Georgetown University. Vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: P. F. Collier. pp. 58–61. OCLC 960066298. Archived from the original on July 7, 2019. Retrieved July 7, 2019 – via Google Books.

External links

Edit

Enoch Fenwick at Find a Grave

Catholic Church titles

Preceded by

Francis Beeston

3rd Rector of St. Peter's Pro-Cathedral

1809–1820 Succeeded by

James Whitfield

Preceded by

–

Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Baltimore

1819–1820 Succeeded by

–

Academic offices

Preceded by

Anthony Kohlmann

12th President of Georgetown College

1820–1825 Succeeded by

Benedict Joseph Fenwick

as Acting President

Portals:

seal Baltimore

Biography

icon Catholicism

icon Education

flag Maryland

Last edited 1 hour ago by Ergo Sum

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