John Baptist Purcell

Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, is where John Baptist Purcell was born on February 26th, 1800, before he crossed the ocean to become a prominent American prelate. His parents gave their children education during a time when penal laws were less rigorously enforced, laying the foundation for his later journey to the United States. That small Irish town launched a life that would eventually shape the Catholic Church in Cincinnati and inspire fiction about bishops in the American West.