The 17th state to be admitted to the United States, February 19, 1803. Although the Jesuit Father Joseph de Bonnecamps accompanied Celoroil de Bienville on his expedition through Ohio in 1749, and preached to the Indians they encountered, no mission was founded. In 1751Father Armand de la Richardie built a chapel at Sandusky, and ministered to the Indians until he was driven out through the hostility between the French and British. In 1790 a colony of French immigrants settled for a time near Gallipolis and were cared for by the Benedictine Dom Pierre Didier. When Father Stephen Badin visited the settlement in 1796 he found their numbers fast dwindling and the church neglected. An Indian mission, started in 1795 by Reverend Edmund Burke, a former professor in the Quebec Seminary, near Fort Miami on the Maumee River, was also short-lived. In 1812Bishop Flaget of Bardstown made a journey through Ohio, baptizing the children of Catholics in Chillicothe, Lancaster, and Somerset. He said Mass in the home of the Dittoes near the last-named settlement, and when he sent a Dominican, Reverend Edward Fenwick, to the Ohio mission, in 1814, it was on a site given by the Dittoes that the first church, Saint Joseph's, was erected in 1818. From this center Zanesville, Cincinnati, Chillicothe, and Lancaster were served by Father Fenwick or his nephew, Reverend Nicholas Young. The latter blessed the first church of Cincinnati in 1819. It was named Christ Church and was a rude plank structure erected at Vine and Liberty Streets, outside the limits of the city. After the consecration of Bishop Fenwick in 1822, the little church was moved by oxen into the city to a site on Sycamore Street, above Sixth. In 1820 the first church of northern Ohio was built at Dungannon, and named for Saint Paul.

Catholic influence on place-names of the state is shown in the following:

Isle Saint George
Saint Bernard
Saint Clairsville
Saint Henry
Saint James
Saint John's
Saint Louisville
Saint Martin
Saint Mary's
Saint Stephen
Santa Fe

Ecclesiastically the state is governed by the archdiocese of

Cincinnati

and the dioceses of

Cleveland
Columbus
Steubenville
Toledo
Youngstown

Bible Dictionaries Ohio

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

Bible Dictionaries
Ohio