St. Benedict's College

Father Roman Hell, OSB, was now appointed prior and it was during his administration that the college desired by Bishop Bayley was begun. (Bishop Bayley also desired that Hell be euphemized to Hill: “For Heaven’s sake change the name to Hill.”)

In September of 1868 St. Benedict’s College, (later to be known as St. Benedict’s Preparatory School) located in the old frame building on High Street, welcomed its first students at the junior and secondary levels with the expectation that as soon as feasible the collegiate courses would be added. This, of course, never happened, as the demand for Catholic preparatory education grew and the bishop of Newark had begun his own Catholic college at Seton Hall. (The official school seal, however, retains the original name, Collegium Sancti Benedicti.)

The first director of St. Benedict’s College was Fr. William Walter, OSB, who was followed by a succession of directors sent from St. Vincent’s whose names resound in the history of St. Mary’s Abbey, men such as Alphonse Heimler, Mellitus Tritz, Frederick Hoessel (during his tenure St. Mary’s became an independent abbey), Hugo Paff (later appointed first Director of St. Anselm College in Manchester), Leonard Walter (Brother of the first director), Cornelius Eckl, who later was also “one of those selected to found the new college among the Yankees,” (Manchester, New Hampshire) as one anonymous manuscript puts it.

The old frame building soon proved inadequate for the college and so at a meeting of the Board of Directors on 26 June 1871, it was unanimously agreed either to close St. Benedict’s or to erect an adequate building. With the permission of the president, Abbot Boniface, plans were drawn, the frame building sold at auction for $300, removed, and a new college building blessed by Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley on 2 February 1872. On 1 July 1872 the first annual commencement of St. Benedict’s College took place.  In 1881 a supplement to the Act of Incorporation of the Order of Saint Benedict of New Jersey authorized the conferral of the “usual academic degrees by any college in the State.” This right has never been revoked.

During this time the some twenty members of the priory in Newark also assumed responsibility for the care of more than a dozen parishes and missions. These included St. Mary’s and St. Benedict’s parishes in the city, St. Henry’s, later Sacred Heart, and Blessed Sacrament in Elizabeth, St. Leo’s in Irvington, St. Mark’s in Rahway, St. Boniface in Paterson, St. Francis in Trenton and missions in Plainfield, Basking Ridge, Bound Brook, Raritan, Stony Hill, Westfield, Stirling, Summit and Paterson.