The first Catholic institution of higher learning in the Northwest Territory, today Xavier University, is founded in Cincinnati in 1831 as a men's college called the Athenaeum. (Bishop John Purcell will ask the Jesuits to take control of the school in 1840, and the name will be changed to Xavier, after the sixteenth century Spanish Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier.

Xavier is the fourth oldest Jesuit University and sixth oldest Catholic university in the United States.)