The Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph were the first Dominican friars in the United States, founded in 1805 by Fr. Edward Dominic Fenwick, O.P., an American who had joined the English Province of the Order as a young man. Fr. Fenwick eventually returned to the United States with the dream of establishing the Order in his native land. Due to the shortage of priests in the western states, he first established the province in Kentucky, and soon extended the ministry to Ohio.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Province began ministering on the East Coast while continuing its presence in Ohio and Kentucky. At this time, the United States witnessed a virtual tidal wave of immigration to its shores. During this era of immigration, the Dominican friars accepted the care of souls in many dioceses.

In addition to staffing numerous parishes, the Dominican friars of this period also became involved in preaching parish missions or retreats. These itinerant Dominican preachers traveled extensively throughout the urban centers of the northeast bringing distinction to the province and attracting vocations.

From the earliest days of the Order’s history, Dominicans had been associated with great university centers—Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, to name but a few. St. Dominic himself inaugurated this long-standing association of his brethren with the universities when he sent seven of his first brethren to study at the University of Paris in 1217. Dominican life, with its emphasis on study as a necessary preparation for preaching, was naturally suited to a university setting.

Such a setting was provided in the United States when the Catholic University of America first opened its doors in 1889. The following year, Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore invited the friars of St. Joseph Province to relocate their studium from Ohio to an area adjacent to the new university. Gibbons firmly believed that the presence of different religious orders in the vicinity would enhance the intellectual life of the university and the Dominican House of Studies was completed in 1905, a full century after the founding of the province. In 1941, the Holy See established the house of studies as a pontifical university under the title of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception.

Dominican commitment to the intellectual apostolate continued with the establishment of Providence College in Rhode Island in 1917. At the invitation of Bishop Matthew Harkins, 9 Dominican friars were sent to establish Providence College, which received its first seventy-one students in 1919.

A missionary zeal to preach for the salvation of souls has always animated the Dominican Order. At the time of the founding of the Province of St. Joseph in the early 19th century, our friars rode on horseback to bring the sacraments to pockets of Catholic settlers in the frontier territory of Kentucky and to establish the Church there. Throughout the 20th century our friars have also served a number of foreign missions, including China, Pakistan, Peru, and Kenya. In the 21st century the friars of our province engage in digital evangelization through a variety of media apostolates to reach souls nationally and internationally.