Bishop John Lancaster Spalding
Lebanon, Marion County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Eminent Theologian. Bishop John Lancaster Spalding, also sociologist and writer, born here on June 2, 1840. Graduated St. Mary's College, 1856, at age 16. He was ordained at American College, Louvain, Belgium, in 1863. Organized first Louisville Negro parish, St. Augustine's, in 1866. Consecrated first Bishop of Peoria, Ill., in 1877. "A great influence on US Catholic education." Died 1916 at Peoria.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
John Lancaster Spalding was born in this Marion County community in 1840 and rose to become one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of 19th-century America. A precocious scholar who finished college at sixteen and was ordained in Belgium, he served in Louisville before being named the first Bishop of Peoria in 1877. He is remembered above all as a champion of Catholic higher education and a founder of the movement that led to The Catholic University of America.
Why it matters
Spalding helped shape the intellectual and educational institutions of American Catholicism during the great wave of Catholic growth, making a small Kentucky birthplace a starting point for a national story.
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