(August 19, 1768 – September 26, 1832) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church, a Dominican friar and the first Bishop of Cincinnati.

Colonel Fenwick was a military figure of the American Revolution and one of the early Catholic families of Maryland.

Many families sent their sons abroad to study, and at sixteen years of age, Edward was sent to the Dominican Holy Cross College in Bornem, near Antwerp, Belgium, where his uncle was a teacher.

[2] In 1788 Fenwick joined the Dominican Order and entered the seminary at Bornem as a theological student, and chose the name, "Dominic".

He was received by Bishop John Carroll, who suggested that Fenwick and the Dominicans who accompanied him should evangelize the vast regions of the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains, including the territories acquired in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

[2] In 1805, Fenwick traversed the entire Mississippi Valley looking for a central location to continue his missionary work.

The missionaries who ministered to the scattered communities on the frontier generally worked alone, and the strain of loneliness and overwork could serve to undermine their health.

The Athenaeum of Ohio-Mount St. Mary Seminary claims its roots through the St. Francis Xavier Seminary and is located in Cincinnati[8] In her book Domestic Manners of the Americans, Fanny Trollope wrote of Fenwick: I had the pleasure of being introduced to the Catholic bishop of Cincinnati, and have never known in any country a priest of a character and bearing more truly apostolic.

His manners were highly polished; his piety active and sincere, and infinitely more mild and tolerant than that of the factious Sectarians who form the great majority of the American priesthood.

[10] The weekly newspaper was carried by stage and riverboat to areas within the diocese's government, as well as to cities in Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

[citation needed] After the college was established he returned to missionary work, visiting the Indian tribes in the Northwestern territory.