Archbishop William Henry Elder (1819-1904)

Born in Maryland, he studied at Mount St. Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, before pursuing seminary studies at the Urban College in Rome, where he was ordained in 1846. He taught theology at Mount St. Mary’s for ten years before he was named Bishop of Natchez, Mississippi, in 1857. The diocese embraced the entire state at the time. During the Civil War, trying to keep the Church’s neutrality, he was arrested for refusing to have prayers said for Union forces in his churches. In 1880, after 23 years in Mississippi, he was named coadjutor Bishop of Cincinnati, which means that he was in line to succeed the reigning Archbishop. In 1883, he was named Archbishop of Cincinnati. During his time there he reorganized the diocesan administration and reopened a seminary that had closed (Mount St. Mary’s of the West). In 1903, he received his own coadjutor, and died in 1904.