Pioneer Bishops of Tennessee

This blog will discuss bishops that served in Tennessee up to 1900.  For more information about Tennessee, see my blog of November 22, 2017.

A number of Spanish and French explorers, including Hernando De Soto and Father Jacques Marquette, visited the area that is now Tennessee starting in the 1500s.  By the late 1600s, Franciscan priests likely offered the first Mass in Tennessee near what is now Memphis.  Other Catholics came through the future State during the 1700s, but none of these visits resulted in any significant Catholic presence in Tennessee. 

Bishop John David, the auxiliary bishop of Bardstown, Kentucky, visited Nashville with Father Robert Abell, in 1821.  At that time—25 years after Tennessee became the 16th state—there were probably only 100 Catholics in Tennessee.  Father Abell continued to visit Nashville periodically over the next few years.  In 1830, the first parish in Tennessee was established—Holy Rosary in Nashville—to serve Irish construction workers and the descendants of French fur trappers.  Holy Rosary church was located on what are now the State Capitol grounds.

In 1837, Pope Gregory XVI separated Tennessee from the Diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky, and Nashville became the see of the new bishop.  The first bishop of Nashville presided over a diocese that initially consisted of only a few hundred Catholics.  Railroad construction in the 1840s brought many Irish Catholic laborers to Tennessee and they were served by priests who rode horses from camp to camp to say Mass and administer the sacraments.  The diocese continued to grow, and by the time of the Civil War, there were almost a dozen Catholic churches in cities and towns across the state, mostly in middle Tennessee. 

Nevertheless, Tennessee never received large waves of Catholic immigrants as did states in the East and Midwest.  Until 1970, the Diocese of Nashville included all of Tennessee.  It was in that year that Pope Paul VI created the Diocese of Memphis to serve Catholics in west Tennessee.  There were few Catholics in eastern Tennessee—there were only three Catholic churches there in 1900—until Catholics came to the area in the 1930s and 1940s to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Alcoa Aluminum, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  Pope John Paul II created the Diocese of Knoxville in 1988 to serve the Catholics in eastern Tennessee.

Richard P. Miles was born in Prince George’s County, Maryland in 1791 and moved with his family to Kentucky as a young boy.  He joined the Dominican Order in 1806 and was ordained a Dominican priest in 1816.  He served communities in Ohio and Kentucky until he was appointed the first Bishop of Nashville in 1837.

Bishop Miles arrived in Nashville on horseback in 1838 to find himself the only resident priest in Tennessee to serve a Catholic population of 300.  He invited some of his fellow Dominicans to staff St. Peter’s parish in Memphis and brought in the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and the Dominican Sisters to establish schools and an orphanage.  He also built St. Mary’s Cathedral in Nashville in 1848.  Bishop Miles made an annual trip by horseback to the Catholic communities throughout the State and he was noted for his preaching and musical talents.  By the time of his death in 1860, the Diocese’s 12,000 Catholics were served by 13 priests, 14 churches, more than 30 chapels and missions, a seminary and other schools, and an orphanage.  In 1972, his body was exhumed and found to be incorrupt, and he is being considered for canonization. 

James Whelan was born in Ireland in 1822 and came to the United States with his parents in the early 1830s.  He joined the Dominican Order in 1839, studied in Kentucky and Ohio, and was ordained a Dominican priest in 1846.  He became a college president in Ohio in 1852 before being named Superior of Dominican Province of St. Joseph in 1854.  He was appointed coadjutor bishop of Nashville in 1859 and became Bishop upon the death of Bishop Miles in 1860. 

Whelan became Bishop at a difficult time as many battles were fought in Tennessee during the Civil War.  His job was made even more difficult by his loyalty to the Union.  He invited the Dominican Sisters to Nashville, who established St. Cecilia Academy.  He also enlarged the Cathedral and started an orphanage and boarding school.  Bishop Whelan resigned in 1864 and retired to a Dominican community in Ohio.  He died in 1878. 

Patrick A. Feehan was born in Ireland in 1829.  His father, a successful farmer, insured that Feehan received a good education.  Feehan was a student and a teacher at Maynooth College in Ireland when he met Archbishop Peter Kenrick of St. Louis.  Kenrick invited Feehan to come to St. Louis and teach in the seminary there.  Feehan came to the United States in 1852—his family had emigrated there two years before.  He was ordained a priest later that year.  Feehan served as pastor of several St. Louis churches and taught in the seminary, eventually becoming president.  He was one of the founders of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in the United States.  After the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, boatloads of wounded were brought to the docks in St. Louis and Feehan attended to the spiritual needs of the wounded and dying.

Feehan was appointed Bishop of Nashville in 1865.  At that time, there were only three diocesan priests and many damaged Catholic buildings due to the Civil War.  He restored the Diocese spiritually and physically by increasing the number of churches in the diocese to 30, of which 18 had resident priests, building schools and an orphanage, and recruiting priests from Ireland.  He brought religious orders to the Diocese, which resulted in the establishment of Nashville’s St. Bernard Academy and of schools run by the Christian Brothers in Memphis.  He also attended the First Vatican Council.  Many Tennesseans were stricken with cholera and yellow fever during the 1860s and 1870s and Bishop Feehan and other priests and religious worked to take care of the victims of these epidemics.  Almost two dozen priests and nuns died caring for others.  Feehan encouraged the foundation of a Catholic fraternal and insurance organization in 1877 known as the Catholic Knights of America—not to be confused with the Knights of Columbus.  Feehan was named the first Archbishop of Chicago in 1880 and died in 1902 from a stroke.

Joseph Rademacher was born in Michigan in 1840 to German immigrant parents.  He attended seminary in Pennsylvania and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1863.  He served as a pastor in the Diocese for the next twenty years before being named Bishop of Nashville in 1883.

Many Catholics came to the Diocese (which included all of Tennessee) during Bishop Rademacher’s tenure and he built churches and other buildings to serve them.  He was appointed Bishop of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1893, and died in 1900.  Bishop Rademacher was noted in both dioceses for his intelligence and breadth of knowledge on many subjects, as well as for his charitable works and kindly disposition, despite being in ill-health during his time both Nashville and Fort Wayne.  

Thomas S. Byrne was born in Ohio in 1841.  After attending seminaries in Kentucky, Ohio, and Rome, he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 1869.  He became a faculty member and later rector of a seminary in Cincinnati.  He was appointed Bishop of Nashville in 1894.

Byrne organized the Diocese by establishing parish boundaries and strong administrative controls and by paying off the Diocese’s debts.  He chaired the first diocesan synod in 1905 with 34 priests attending.  He built many churches and schools, including some for African Americans, and brought in religious orders of nuns to administer hospitals and nursing homes.  His most notable building was the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville.  He was an outspoken Bishop and noted author.  He supported the Spanish American War and the establishment of the Catholic University of America.  Bishop Byrne died in 1923.