First Mass in Ohio

In the fall of 1808, Father Edward Fenwick, a Dominican priest, met Jacob Dittoe on this site and offered the Holy Mass for his family and their kinsmen, the Fink family. Dittoe had written to Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, asking that a priest be sent from Baltimore, Maryland, to administer baptism, confession, and marriage. As he traveled through Ohio, Father Fenwick searched for the Dittoe family and, following the sound of an axe, found Dittoe in these woods. The meeting was so emotional that Fenwick always recounted it with tears in his eyes. It marked the beginning of Fenwick’s labors as the Apostle of Ohio and the birth of the Catholic Church in the state. Jacob Dittoe and John Fink had settled in this area in 1804 after marrying sisters, Catherine and Mary Sneeringer, at Conewago Chapel near Hanover, Pennsylvania, and Jacob’s brother Anthony also settled nearby. In November 1807, Jacob Dittoe purchased the northern portion of the east half of Section 19 in Reading Township, on the north side of Zane’s Trace, now Stagecoach Road, and this tract included the historic site. The homestead remained in the Dittoe family until 2000. From these beginnings, Father Edward Fenwick established the first church in Ohio, St. Joseph’s, on land donated by the Dittoes, later became the first bishop of the Cincinnati diocese, and through his apostolate Ohio came to have 2.1 million Catholics.

Ohio · United States