The Establishment of Christ Church
C I N C I N N AT I ’ S F I R S T PA R I S H BY FATHER DAVID ENDRES
The following is an excerpt from A Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati: The Catholic Church in Southwest Ohio, 1821-2021 by Fr. David J. Endres.
A group of four German Catholic families arrived in Cincinnati in 1817 as part of a coordinated migration. Perhaps only by coincidence, by the time they arrived efforts at organizing the Catholics in the city were gaining strength. Only weeks before the families’ arrival in Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Western Spy and Dayton Ohio Watchman advertised a meeting of area Catholics, to be held on October 12, 1817, to make plans to build a Catholic church, which would be named Christ Church. The note encouraged Catholics “to please take notice that great encouragement is already held out to them.” Nine men, seven women and four children attended the October 1817 meeting at the Michael Scott home. Soon a campaign to raise funds for the building of a church commenced. OBTAINING LAND
In the spring of 1819, the Christ Church congregation, representing an estimated 100 Catholics, was officially incorporated in the state of Ohio as a religious society with five lay trustees. With meager funds, the pioneer Catholics purchased a lot north of the city limits, in the “northern liberties” (named because it was outside the reach of “the law”) near what would later become the northwest corner of Liberty and Vine Streets. Though it has been claimed that the church was built outside the city limits because of an anti-Catholic ordinance forbidding a church in town, it seems more likely that a city location was not proscribed but that the land in the northern liberties was acquired more easily and on better terms. This, however, placed the property in proximity to saloons, gambling houses, brothels and other undesirable neighbors. BUILDING THE CHURCH
Once the land was secured, Michael Scott drew up the plans for a simple frame church of 55 by 30 feet. The building was soon assembled, and on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1819, Christ Church held its first religious service. Father Nicholas Dominic Young, OP – the nephew of the missionary and future bishop Edward Fenwick – celebrated Mass that day and continued, along with Fenwick, to serve Catholics in Cincinnati. The church was quite modest, made of bare wood, without plaster or ceiling. Perhaps because the building was unsecured, the 6 8 | TH E C ATHOLIC TE LEGR A P H
