Howard family farm In 1787, Edward Howard lead a group of
Maryland Catholics who settled in the area of
Bardstown, Kentucky, as part of a larger group who had begun moving to Kentucky in 1785. Howard settled on a property three miles south of the town of Bardstown. Following Edward's death, ownership of the property passed to Thomas and Ann Howard. In 1795, the couple built a log cabin on their 109 acres of property, and in 1806 it became the site of a public church named Saint Thomas, to alleviate overcrowding at the church that would become the
Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral.
Saint Thomas Seminary April 1808 the
Diocese of Bardstown was created by
Pope Pius VII, encompassing all of Kentucky as well as Tennessee, Ohio, and the
Northwest Territory under the leadership of Bishop
Benedict Flaget. Previously this territory had been administered by the
Archdiocese of Baltimore. Bishop Flaget, along with Father
John Baptist Mary David, accompanied by a handful of seminarians including
Guy Ignatius Chabrat, set sail down the Ohio, forming the nucleus of the clergy of the still-young diocese. Flaget and David continued seminary formation aboard the
flatboat, thus forming St. Thomas Seminary on May 22, 1811, the date the craft pushed off from
Pittsburgh. Saint Thomas was the first Roman Catholic seminary on the
American frontier. By the following spring, the seminarians began building additional log dwellings to allow for a specialized dormitory for the seminarians. The community moved to their current mother house in
Nazareth, Kentucky in 1822.
Log cabin and church restoration Following the closure of the parish school in 1998, the parish began to restore the original log cabin which Flaget and other Saint Thomas founders under the guidance of the
Kentucky Heritage Council. Appeals were made to the 44 dioceses which had been originally part of the Diocese of Bardstown, with 37 of them contributing financially. The restored cabin was dedicated on September 10, 2006. The same year, a new altar and tabernacle stand were dedicated in the church, along with other renovations to the space. == References ==