Samuel Thomas Wilson

Background

Samuel T. Wilson was born in 1761, in London, England, of parents in the merchant class.

Education

In 1770 the child, who could not be educated as a Catholic in England because of the penal laws, was sent to the Dominican College, Holy Cross, in ancient Bornhem, Belgium.

Career

In 1777 he entered the Dominican novitiate, and proceeded to the College of St. Thomas of Aquin in Louvain for his course in theology. Because of an ordinance of Joseph II, the "sacristan emperor" of Austria, Wilson could not take his solemn vows until he was in his twenty-fifth year (December 8, 1785).

A year later (June 10), he was ordained a priest of the Order of Friar Preachers (Dominicans) by Bishop Ferdinand M. Lobkowitz of Ghent. Reputed a good scholar, a linguist, and a doctor of sacred theology, Wilson taught at Holy Cross and was vicar-provincial of the community in the years of terror under the French Revolutionists. Finally the blow came, and the faculty of Bornhem, including Wilson, fled in disguise from the Jacobins via Rotterdam to Carshalton in Surrey, England, where the relaxation of the anti-Catholic code permitted the reestablishment of the refugee college (1794). After teaching there a year, Wilson was ordered back to Bornhem to preserve the property. Courageously he heard confessions and said mass in the homes of friends, conducted the college, bought its buildings at auction on its seizure by agents of the Directory, and held on despite persecution and imprisonment until Napoleon's accession brought partial relief. Discouraged by the secularization of the institution under orders from the papal legate in Paris, the Dominicans turned their attention to America. Edward D. Fenwick and Robert Angier emigrated in 1804, and Wilson and William Tuite arrived in Maryland the following year (September 10).

By the end of the year, Wilson was in Kentucky as a missionary in the Cartwright's Creek settlement, where he also conducted a grammar school for boys.

In 1807 he was named provincial, and in this capacity was responsible for the building of the Church of St. Rose and the College of St. Thomas Aquin near Springfield. As one of the earliest colleges in Kentucky, this school attracted a number of boys, including Jefferson Davis, but Wilson found its financial maintenance on the primitive frontier no easy task. Honored as "the shining light of his diocese" by Bishop Benedict J. Flaget, he acted as co-consecrator of Bishop John B. David and Bishop Fenwick, thus performing a function quite unusual for a simple priest. In 1822 he founded the first American convent of the now flourishing Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic. Samuel Thomas Wilson died on May 23, 1824, in Washington County, Kentucky.

Achievements

• Samuel Thomas Wilson was generally considered by the Catholics of Kentucky as a priest, educator, and preacher, and by the citizens at large as a pioneer-builder of the state.