Background
William Quarter was born on January 21, 1806 in Killurin, King's County, Ireland. He was the son of Michael and Ann (Bennet) Quarter.
William Quarter was born on January 21, 1806 in Killurin, King's County, Ireland. He was the son of Michael and Ann (Bennet) Quarter.
At the age of 16, Wiliam entered the seminary at Maynooth as a protégé of Bishop Doyle.
Denied admission to Quebec and Montreal seminaries because of his youth, he appealed successfully to Dr. John Dubois of Mount St. Marys, Emmitsburg, Md. , where he was permitted to teach mathematics and the classics in the preparatory school while studying theology. As a prudent, self-sacrificing priest, he challenged popular attention by heroic service during the cholera epidemic, and gained episcopal notice by the establishment of two parochial schools under the Sisters of Charity whom he enlisted in Emmitsburg, by the conversion of John Oertel, a Lutheran minister, who became editor of an influential German Catholic journal in Baltimore, and by his social work among immigrants. In an unusual triple ceremony, March 10, 1844, he was consecrated, along with Andrew Byrne and John McCloskey, by Bishop Hughes, who was no doubt responsible for all three nominations.
Quarter's episcopal tenure in Chicago was brief, but he laid permanent foundations. With this purpose in mind, he established the University of St. Mary's of the Lake, and introduced the Sisters of Mercy of Pittsburgh under Sister Mary Francis Ward for parochial schools and orphanages. He built a number of churches, including Saint Peter's and Saint Joseph's for the rapidly increasing German population, introduced some forty priests, sponsored devotional confraternities, inaugurated the first diocesan theological conferences in the United States, and obtained a legislative enactment which incorporated the bishops of Chicago as a corporation sole to hold diocesan properties. This enactment prevented the rise of trusteeism with its usual difficulties. In his constructive program Quarter was aided materially by his brother, Rev. Walter Quarter (1812 - 1863), and by such builders of Chicago as Walter Newberry, W. B. Ogden, and J. Y. Scammon, whose confidence he won by an approved policy of attracting immigrants westward.