Odenheimer was prepared at Flushing, Long Island, at the famous Institute founded in 1828 by the Reverend William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877).

Scholars emanating from the Flushing Institute very often matriculated in the third year at Penn, Virginia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other colleges.

He would have left Penn just upon the arrival of another Muhlenberg "school son," J. Lloyd Breck (1818-1876), the legendary missionary educator of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California.

[3] He also published several books, including "The True Catholic No Romanist," (1842) about the Oxford Movement, and "Essay on Canon Law" (1847).

[4] His theological beliefs were out of step with the rising anti-Catholicism of Philadelphia in the 1840s, but Odenheimer sought to steer a middle course between the extremes of Catholicism and Protestantism.