Edward Henchy received his tonsure and minor orders from Michael Portier, the Bishop of Mobile, on June 21, 1855.
[2] He became the Jesuit mission priest at St. Joseph's Church in Cordova, Maryland, which served the rural Maryland counties of Talbot, Queen Anne's, Kent, Caroline, and Dorchester, as well as Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware as a priest from 1867 to 1870.
[3] Henchy was appointed to succeed John Early in 1870 as president of Loyola College in Maryland and pastor of St. Ignatius Church.
However, in 1868,[5] ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the part of Maryland east of the Chesapeake Bay region had been transferred from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, in which the Jesuits operated, to the newly erected Diocese of Wilmington.
[2] In this capacity, he ministered to the area again from 1874 to 1878,[3] as the pastor of the Church of Saints Peter & Paul in Easton, Maryland.