The Picnic: From The Glorious Renaissance to the American Outdoors, This 'Spree' Was Made For You and Me; Finale: A Warm and Tasty Apple Tart to Love

'The Luncheon of the Boating Party'  by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

You might think. like me, that there is nothing more American than a good old-fashioned picnic but surprisingly this outdoor entertainment is actually a European tradition. And, while here in the United States picnics are more or less a middle-class activity, the prototype on which it is based, is decidedly more sumptuous.

From the earliest medieval hunting feasts, grand Renaissance banquets and fashionable Victorian garden parties in England and France, the foundation was set for our American-style repasts that have become a part of our summer and fall calendars. The American picnic is a social event where groups of families, friends or both gather to share home-cooked meals with baseball or football games, activities for the kids and a chance for the ladies to catch up on 'news,' dare i say gossip! The setting is usually a county, city or state park, possibly a beach or local picnic grounds.

'Luncheon in the Garden' by Claude Monet

Picnicking really came of age during the Victorian era appearing in the literature and art of that period. Dickens, Jane Austen, Monet, Renoir and Cezanne all found pleasure in introducing this form of social event into their fiction and paintings. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the oldest written evidence of the word picnic in the English language to 1748. It is suggested that the French might have invented the word 'picnic' derived from 'pique nique' referring to an indoor dinner which those present had contributed some food.

This past weekend we had the occasion to attend a picnic sponsored by our parish here on Staten Island. The Island is no stranger to picnics. Once upon a time, there were a number of park-like grounds that were rented to various organizations for group get-togethers. Today, there is only one organized picnic ground left, Nansen's Park, which has been hosting a variety of group gatherings for some 70 years.

At Nansen's Park, the food and beverages are supplied all day for a reasonable fee.  Their facilities include a ball field, park, dance floor and lots of traditional picnic tables many covered by a large gazebo in case of rain. This past weekend in New York was glorious and the event was a big success.

I made an apple tart just to keep in the spirit the original picnic idea. The tart crust was supplied by Paula Deen, via the Internet, and the apple recipe was based on an apple tart recipe I'd been holding onto for a few years. That recipe called for apricot preserves as a glaze, I substituted raspberry preserves instead.

Fresh from the oven, both sweet and tart, the warm pastry baked in a rectangular tart pan, was a big hit. Here's the recipe:

Apple Tart
Preheat oven the 375 degrees 

Ingredients
About 6 medium Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced
3 large egg yolks
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour

For the Glaze
1/2 cup raspberry or apricot preserves
3 tablespoons frozen orange juice concentrate

Crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
2 tablespoons sour cream

Directions

• For crust, place the flour, butter, and sour cream in food processor and pulse to combine. When the dough has formed a ball, pat with lightly floured hands into the bottom and sides of an ungreased 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Bake for about 15 minutes, until crust is set but not browned. Let cool.
• Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees 
• For filling, peel and thickly slice the apples. Arrange the slices in overlapping circles on top of the crust, until it's completely covered. Overfill the crust, because the apples will shrink a bit during cooking. 
• Combine the egg yolks, . sour cream, sugar, and flour and beat until smooth. Pour the mixture over the apples.
• Place the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake for about 1 hour, until the custard sets and is pale golden in color. Cover with an aluminum foil tent if the crust gets too dark.
• Transfer the tart pan to a wire rack to cool. When cool, remove the side wall of the pan. 
• For glaze: To make the glaze, combine the preserves or jelly and orange juice. Spread with a pastry brush over the top of the warm tart. Serve the tart warm, at room temperature, or chilled

Discovering Columbus Trivia on Columbus Day

Columbus lands in San Salvador claiming the land for Spain.

The Details

• Columbus left on his historic voyage in 1492 on behalf of Spain even though Columbus was actually of Italian heritage.
• Columbus set sail with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta and the flagship Santa Maria. A 'flagship' is the ship in a fleet that carries the commanding admiral (in this case, Columbus). The Santa Maria was a merchant ship of between 400 and 600 tons, about 75 feet long and a beam (widest width) of 25 feet. It had a depth of 6 feet with three masts: a mainmast, a foremast, and a mizzenmast. Five sails altogether were attached to these masts and each mast carried one large sail. As Columbus prepared to return to Spain, the Santa Maria ran into a coral reef that tore holes in the bottom of the ship. A fort was built out of the wreckage of the Santa Maria and since they were down to two ships 40 volunteers stayed behind to build a small colony.
• There were about 90 people in Columbus' crew when he set sail.
• The first celebration of Columbus' landing in the New World was in 1792 but Columbus Day became an official holiday in 1937 only after Italian immigrants lobbied for the recognition of Christopher Columbus, an Italian. Franklin Roosevelt instituted the first federal-level recognition of the day. 
• Columbus never set foot in North America. His fleet landed on a small island in present-day Bahamas which Columbus claimed for Spain. He named it San Salvador and assuming he had reached "the Indies" (Asia), he gave the name "Indians" to the Native Americans he met on the island. When the Indians told Columbus about a larger island to the south, he thought it must be part of China or Japan but it was actually Cuba. Christopher Columbus was an explorer. The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus. His name in Italian is Cristoforo Colombo and in Spanish it is Cristóbal Colón. Columbus was born sometime between August and October 1451 in Genoa, Italy. His father,  Domenico Colombo, was a wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who also owned a cheese stand. His mother's name was Susanna.

Christopher Columbus

The National Holiday

• The main purpose of Columbus Day is to mark Columbus' arrival in the Americas.
• In most Latin American countries, Columbus Day is known as Da de la Raza and is also known as Discovery Day in the Bahamas, as Día de la Hispanidad and Fiesta Nacional in Spain and as Día de las Américas (Day of the Americas) in Uruguay. These holidays have been celebrated unofficially since the late 18th century, and officially in various areas since the early 20th century.
• Colorado was the first U.S. state to adopt Columbus Day as an official state holiday.
• Native American groups created their own holiday called indigenous People's Day or Native American Day as a counter to Columbus Day.

Columbus and Religion

• The Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus was founded in the United States in 1882 by an Irish-America priest Father Michael McGivney (right). He named the organization after the Italian explorer who was a hero to many American Catholics and partly to bridge the division between Irish-Catholics and Catholic immigrants of other nationalities. It's mission was to provide insurance to care for widows and orphans left behind if the breadwinner of the family died. 
• Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus offered the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because many Catholic theologians insisted that the Earth was flat.
• Columbus was also interested in the Bible and in biblical prophecies. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Columbus himself saw his accomplishments as spreading the Christian religion.

The Happy Mistakes

• Columbus was wrong and at odds with the scholars of his day in three ways: his low estimate of the size of the Earth, his high estimate of the size of the Eurasian landmass, and his belief that Japan and other inhabited islands lay far to the east of the coast of China. 
• Mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, was born in Florence, Italy in 1397. He was one of the most distinguished scientists of the fifteenth century. Toscanelli's ideas of the geography of the Atlantic Ocean influenced Columbus' plans.
• Columbus originally estimated the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan to be about 3,000 Italian miles when it was actually about 12,200 mi. 
• Columbus possessed valuable knowledge about trade winds, which were the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. During his first voyage in 1492, the brisk trade winds from the east, commonly called 'easterlies', propelled Columbus' fleet for five weeks, from the Canary Islands to The Bahamas. 



Queen Isabella of Spain

• During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, at a locale he named San Salvador. On three more voyages, Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming all for the Spanish Empire.

The Funding

• Trying to get funding for his voyage, Columbus first presented plans to John II, King of Portugal. He wanted three sturdy ships and one year's time to sail out into the Atlantic, search for a western route to the Orient, and return. The king's advisors rejected the plan. When explorer Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal after successfully rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal thought it would soon have the eastern sea route to Asia under its control. The Portugese King was no longer interested in Columbus' project.
• Columbus traveled from Portugal to both Genoa and Venice, but he received no encouragement there either.
• Just when it seemed it would not happen, Columbus presented his ideas to King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, Spain. Queen Isabella referred his plan to a committee who pronounced the idea impractical. However, to keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, the Catholic Monarchs gave him an annual allowance and furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their domain to provide him food and lodging at no cost. Almost half of the financing was to come from private Italian investors, whom Columbus had already lined up. The Spanish monarchs left it to the royal treasurer to shift funds among various royal accounts for the enterprise. Columbus was to be named 'Admiral of the Seas' and would receive a portion of all profits. The terms were unusually generous because the monarchs did not really expect him to return.

... And, The Miscellaneous

Leif Ericson

• After the voyage, Columbus was arrested in 1500 and lost his title and earnings. When he died, his sons Diego and Fernando took legal action to enforce their father's contract.  
• In 1479 Columbus married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, daughter of the Porto Santo governor. In 1479 or 1480, his son Diego Columbus was born. Filipa either died in 1485 or Columbus may have just left her. Columbus found a mistress in Spain in 1487.
• Ambitious, Columbus learned Latin, as well as Portuguese and Castilian and read many books about astronomy, geography, and history, including the works of Ptolemy, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, the travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville, Pliny's Natural History and Pope Pius II's Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum. His ideas about the world that were simple, strong and often wrong.
• The Norse expedition led by Leif Ericson (right) was the first to reach the Americas.
• In 2008, a crime movie called Columbus Day starred Val Kilmer.
• Even though Columbus was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas, his voyages led to the first European contact with America and the start of a period of exploration and colonization of foreign lands that lasted for many centuries. This had an enormous impact in thedevelopment of the modern Western world. 

Hot Apple Pie and Crust Fit For A Queen, But 'A La Mode' is Really 'A La American'; Mr. Appleseed: Was He Fact or Fiction?

Apple pie with Gala apples in the background. (not used in pie)

Most of us think of apple pie as a traditional American dessert but it turns out that the only apple native to America is the crab apple. The real story of apples in America begins in the Kazakhstan mountains, their ancestral home. Ancient trade routes passed through this area and it's likely that travelers picked the fruit to take with them along the way. The seeds were discarded, sprouting into trees and mixed with native apples they eventually produced millions of different trees in Europe and Asia.

A very early pie recipe appeared in a 1390 cookbook by the culinary employees of King Richard II. It was presented to Queen Elizabeth and was one of the first recorded apple pie recipes that resemble the pie as we know it today.

The fruity confection evolved through the centuries and by the time pie eating Europeans arrived in America they discovered they needed to bring the apple seeds along with them since the native crab apples just didn't cut it, no pun intended, in a well-made pie. 

Since we're talking about apples, what about Johnny Appleseed? Yes, he did exist! A.K.A. John Chapman, he was really an American nurseryman who planted apple trees in large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend because of his kind and generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the importance he attributed to apples.

Of course Americans can never leave well enough alone. In the 1800s, a gentleman dining at the Cambridge Hotel in Washington County, New York, ordered vanilla ice cream with his apple pie. A nearby diner spying the concoction, christened the dish 'pie a la mode'. A uniquely American tradition was born!

Certain members of my family have had a love affair with a commercially made apple pie. I won't name the brand but for this amateur 'chef', it just doesn't cut it, pardon the pun. The crust has no crunch, the apples are over cooked and the juices are too syrupy for my taste. I just don't get it. I've made a few apple pies over the years and never had much luck with the crust. Turning to frozen pie crusts from the supermarket and even some from gourmet food stores, I compensated for my lack of pie crust proficiency by cheating in this way. All this to make the family happy!

Granny Smith Apple

So when I came across some fresh tart Granny Smith apples, I decided to give the crust another try. While using a can of pumpkin pulp last week, the inside label had a recipe that seemed rather simple. This recipe called for vegetable shortening instead of butter. It had been a while since my last attempt but I was sure I'd always used butter in the crust.

Final result, the crust worked nicely, rolled out without a problem and baked to a nice color and crispiness that stayed for a few days. This crust recipe's a keeper. The filling recipe is very traditional—I've used it before and it's not overly sweet and complements the tartness of the apples especially at this time of the year.

Traditional American Pie

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
8-10 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, sliced

Directions

• Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour to form a paste. Add water, sugars, and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and let simmer. 
• Place the bottom crust in your pan. Fill with sliced apples, creating a mound. 
• Cut strips of pastry from remaining crust mix. Cover with a lattice work. 
• Pour the sugary liquid slowly over the crust. Clean up spills. 
• Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees. 
• Continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes, until apples are soft. 
• Dust with confectioners sugar and top with vanilla ice cream if you want 'a la mode.'

Homemade Pie Crust
Makes one 9-inch deep dish crust (Note: it was enough for a shallower pie and lattice strips for the top)

Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
3-4 tablespoons cold water

Directions

• Combine flour and salt in medium bowl, Cut in shortening with pastry blender or two knives until mixture is crumbly. 
• Sprinkle with cold water and blend until mixture holds together. 
• Shape into a ball and place on floured surface. Roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick with rolling pin. Line pie plate with dough. 
• Re-roll scraps to make lattice strips at 1/2 wide.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs and Thank You

The Bobbsey Twins and Other Great Childhood Reads Were Written By Ghost Writers; Laura Lee Hope? Um, She Didn't Exist

 Flossie and Freddy Bobbsey in an illustration from editions with a dust jacket.

Edward Stratemeyer

Today is the birthday of Edward L. Stratemeyer (born 1862) and you might rightly ask 'who is Edward L. Stratemeyer'? If you or your children were fans of the Bobbsey Twins series, you might be amazed to learn that the author, Laura Lee Hope, is actually Mr. Stratemeyer's pen name. In fact, the author had more than 60 names and wrote over 800 books in his lifetime.

In 1906, he created the Stratemeyer Syndicate and produced reading material for kids and teens throughout his lifetime. Some of the series were The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries. Using the name Arthur Winfield, Stratemeyer wrote twenty books from 1899-1917 under the title of The Rover Boys, and forty books about a young inventor Tom Swift.

Edward Stratemeyer, born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was the youngest of six children. His father was a German tobacconist. He loved to read and after high school he went to work in his father's store. He had his own printing press and wrote short stories distributing them to friends and family finally selling a story to the popular children's paper Golden Days for seventy-five dollars. Stratemeyer was a savvy businessman and his introduction of fifty-cent novels sent book sales skyrocketing creating a lucrative market for writers and buyers. Stratemeyer busied himself with the introduction of new plot lines, delegating work to writers and illustrators, editing proofs, and negotiating with publishers until he died on May 10, 1930.

An early illustration from 

'The Bobbsey Twins in The Great City'

The Bobbsey Twins books were a family favorite even though the series began back in 1904, way before my time. The books featured the adventures of two sets of twins, Bert and Nan and Freddie and Flossie and they continued throughout his longest-running series. The Bobbseys' were a middle-class family whose father owned a lumber yard. The twins were fraternal and practically eternal when it came to their ages:

In the original editions, the first books in the series took place in a clear chronology, with the characters aging as time passed. The Bobbsey Twins: Merry Days Indoors and Out took place over the course of a school year, with Nan and Bert described as eight years old and Freddie and Flossie four; the second book, The Bobbsey Twins in the Country is set the following summer. The second part of the summer is chronicled in The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore, which is written as a direct sequel to the previous book, tying up some plot threads. The fourth book, The Bobbsey Twins at School, begins the next autumn, with Nan and Bert "nearly nine years old" and Freddie and Flossie "almost five." Editors at the Stratemeyer Syndicate quickly realized that at this rate their young heroes would quickly age beyond their readership, and so the later books in the series and in all revised editions, have the older twins perpetually 12 years old and the younger twins 6.

An illustration from 

'The Bobbsey Twins at Plymouth Rock'

According to Wikipedia, Edward Stratemeyer is believed to only have written the first volume in 1904. Volumes 2 and 3 are attributed to Lilian Garis, wife of Howard Garis, who is credited with volumes 4–28 and 41. Elizabeth Ward is credited with volumes 29–35, while Harriet Stratemeyer Adams is credited with 36–38, 39 (with Camilla McClave), 40, 42, 43 (with Andrew Svenson), and 44–48. Volumes 49–52 are attributed to Andrew Svenson, while 53–59, and the 1960s rewrites of 1–4, 7, 11–13, and 17, are attributed to June Dunn. Grace Grote is regarded as the real author of 60–67 and the rewrites of 14 and 18–20, and Nancy Axelrad is credited with 68–72. Rewrites of volumes 5 and 16 are credited to Mary Donahoe, 6 and 25 to Patricia Doll, 8–10 and 15 to Bonnibel Weston, and 24 to Margery Howard. Howard R. Garis also wrote as 'Victor Appleton' for the Tom Swift series. Leslie McFarlane wrote as 'Franklin W. Dixon' for the Hardy Boys series, and Mildred A. Wirt Benson wrote as 'Carolyn Keene' for most of the original Nancy Drew series. Yikes!

I guess it took a village to make the Bobbsey clan come to life and bring untold amounts of adventure, mystery and travel to millions of kids like myself, my  sisters and my daughters as we were growing up. To refresh your memory the cast of characters were: Mr. Richard Bobbsey, the owner of a lumber yard in Lakeport; his wife and the twins mother, Mary; Nan and Bert, their elder twins, Freddie and Flossie, their younger twins; Dinah and Sam Johnson, an African-American  couple who were the Bobbseys' cook, and handyman respectively (hmm, didn't every middle class family have live-in help back in the day?); Snoop, the Bobbseys' cat and Snap, the Bobbseys' dog. Of course there was the proverbial 'bad boy' by name of Danny Rugg, always the source of endless trouble for the Bobbsey clan. We seriously hated Danny! The books came with us on every vacation and a volume or two was always on our Christmas or birthday list. By high school, I think we had read every book published to date and I admit to reading some of the newer ones that my daughter had in her collection.

Edition from 1950s

Many of the early books had little or no connection to the real world but by 1917 the Bobbsey's were beginning to visit real places like Plymouth Rock and as the series progressed, the trips to real places were well-researched and detailed even mentioning the the names of well-known hotels and restaurants.

The look of the series also changed over the years from dust jackets to picture covers, no dust jackets, a lavender spine and back cover that replaced the green bindings that had been used before. Only 20 of the books were were completely rewritten, most of them were given modern titles and 16 were never re-released being thought that they were too dated to be fixed up. Most of the rewrites were needed because of changing technology (yes there were horses and buggies in the early editions!) or changing social mores, with respect to how Sam and Dinah were portrayed. One book, The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May received the most extreme rewrite because it was a story about the Bobbsey family's adventures trying to find the parents of a foundling baby. By the 1960s, modern social services had rendered the original story unrealistic so a new novel was written about the twins' adventures with a baseball-playing baby elephant (The Bobbsey Twins' Adventures with Baby May). This, however, had a ripple effect, as the original The Bobbsey Twins at Cherry Corners had been a sequel to the original Baby May. Thus, a second book, The Bobbsey Twins: The Mystery at Cherry Corners, was written. It incorporated only a very little bit of material from its original version.

Pumpkin Mini-Muffins Are Delightfully 'Autumn'; Centuries-Old Fruit, Seemingly American, Has International Origins

When the weather turns colder like it did here in New York this weekend, my thoughts turn to....baking! Maybe they shouldn't ('weighty' matters notwithstanding), but a can of pumpkin pulp was calling me from my pantry and I was defenseless. Besides, I had a small party to go to and offered to bring the muffins along as a contribution.

I saw this recipe in a magazine recently paired with a cream cheese maple frosting. In addition to the can of pumpkin, I also had a can of prepared cream cheese frosting and decided to 'lace' it with a couple of teaspoons of pure maple syrup. Cheating? You bet! But it worked and tasted almost as good as the real thing would have. I'll list the ingredients and instructions as it was originally intended.

There probably will be a few 'pumpkin' posts this month and I'll share some notes on pumpkin history today. The name pumpkin has it's origins in the Greek language but changed from country to country several centuries ago. The Greek word for 'large melon' is 'pepon. The French pronounced it 'pompon' and the Brits changed 'pompon' to 'pumpion' and those headstrong American colonists changed "pumpion" into 'pumpkin.'

The colonists discovered that Native Americans had many uses for the pumpkin. Dried strips of pumpkin were woven into mats. Roasted strips of pumpkin were cooked on the open fire. Not to be upstaged, the colonists invented pumpkin pie when they sliced off the top, removed the seeds, filled the insides with milk, spices and honey then baking it in hot ashes.

The bright orange color of pumpkin indicates that the fruit is loaded with an beta-carotene, an important antioxidant. Beta-carotene is a plant that converts to vitamin A in the body. When that occurs, beta carotene may reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancer and offers protect against heart disease. Beta-carotene offers protection against other diseases as well as some degenerative aspects of aging. One cup of cooked pumpkin, without added salt, is only 49 Calories. There are 2 grams of protein, 3 grams of dietary fiber, 37 mg of calcium and 12 mg of vitamin C in the same one cup amount.

Of course, when you make mini-muffins with icing, it isn't as healthy as ingesting a pure cup of pumpkin, but 'mini' is the operative word here so it could be a lot worse.  

Mini-Pumpkin Muffins With Maple Icing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, ground ginger, ground all spice and ground cloves

1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin 

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions:

• Place cupcake papers in mini muffin pans.
• Combine flour and other dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
• Combine pumpkin, sugars, eggs and oil in a large bowl. 
• Add flour mix to pumpkin mix in small batches strirring until moistened. 
• Spoon into pans, filling about 3/4 full.
• Bake for 15-20 minutes until muffins rise. 
• Remove from pans and cool on wire racks.
• Drop dollops of frosting on top when cooled. 
• Top with a walnut or two!

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

16 ounces softened cream cheese

1/2 cup softened butter

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

4 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

• Mix cream cheese, butter and syrup until combined and light and fluffy.
• Gradually add powdered sugar, until well blended.

A Short Timeline and History of Catholic Seminaries in the Eastern United States

I'm involved in putting together a historical journal celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the parish my family belongs to. Located on Staten Island, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church was founded in 1862 by the Reverend John Barry under the auspices of the Diocese of New York.

Reading over the early history, I was intrigued by the references to Catholic Seminaries, institutions of higher learning charged with preparing young men for the priesthood. There were not very many back in those days and candidates for the priesthood embarked on  long and arduous journeys in order to attend school. Over time and with the increasing amount of Catholics arriving in the New York area, the seminaries moved closer to New York City, the seat of the Archdiocese. Most of the priests in New York parishes today are prepared at St.Joseph's Seminary, commonly known as Dunwoodie, located in Yonkers, New York about 13 miles away from St. Patrick's Cathedral. There were many more to be sure but listed below are the main Catholic institutions.

1789 

Pope Pius VI (above) makes the United States a Diocese

1791: St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, Maryland
Located in Baltimore, Maryland, St. Mary's (pictured left) was the first Catholic seminary established in the United States. In existence for well over two hundred years, St. Mary's has been owned and operated by the Sulpician Fathers, a community of diocesan priests dedicated to the formation of priests. In 1805, St. Mary's was chartered as a university in Maryland, and in 1822, Pope Pius VII established the seminary the country's first faculty with the right to grant degrees in the name of the Holy See. To this day, the seminary continues to offer the pontifical STB,  Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology Degree and STL Licentiate in Sacred Theology. This privilege was first granted to St. Mary's in 1822 by Pope Pius VII at the request of the Most Reverend Ambrose Maréchal, the third Archbishop of Baltimore. The original St. Mary's Seminary was first located on Paca Street in a historic neo-gothic chapel designed by Maximilian Godefroy. Still there today, it is open for visitors and is adjacent to the Mother Seton House where St. Elizabeth Ann Seton lived while in Baltimore.

1808: Mount St. Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, Maryland

The history of Mount St. Mary’s University begins in the creation of Maryland as a refuge of religious freedom. Catholic immigrants flock to the new colony and in 1789 the pope designated Baltimore the seat of the newly created U.S. diocese. John Hughes (pictured right) built  St. Joseph’s Church in Emmitsburg to serve the mostly Irish Catholic population and when the Rev. John DuBois, who fled France for the United States, he became pastor of Frederick, Md. In 1805, he laid  the cornerstone of Saint-Mary-on-the-Hill, uniting Emmitsburg’s Irish and English congregations. He bought the first parcel of land for what would become Mount St. Mary’s Seminary.

1833: St. Joseph's Seminary, Nyack, New York
On May 29,1833, a cornerstone was laid in Nyack, New York, a place selected by Bishop Dubois. The 165 acre farm was thirty miles from New York and cost $12,000, of which $4,000. was paid in cash. Plans were made for a house eighty feet square, costing $30,000. At that time there were nine churches in the diocese, twenty-four priests and a Catholic population of 150,000, of whom 25,000 were in New York City. Father John McGerry, president of Mount St. Mary's, Emmitsburg, was the first president of Nyack Seminary.

1841: St. John's College (Fordham University), Bronx, New York
Fordham University was originally founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Irish-born coadjutor bishop (later archbishop) of the Diocese of New York, the Most Reverend John Joseph Hughes. The college was the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeastern United States. Bishop Hughes purchased most of Rose Hill Manor and Estate in Fordham, the Bronx, at a little less than $30,000 for the purpose of establishing St. Joseph's Seminary in September 1840. "Rose Hill" was the name originally given to the site in 1787 by its owner, Robert Watts, a wealthy New York merchant, in honor of his family's ancestral home in Scotland. The seminary was paired with St. John's College, which opened at Rose Hill with a student body of six on June 21, 1841. The Reverend John McCloskey (later Archbishop of New York and eventually the first American Cardinal) was its first president, and the faculty were secular priests and lay instructors. The college went through a succession of four diocesan priests in five years as presidents, including Fr. James Roosevelt Bayley, a distant cousin of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and nephew of St. Elizabeth Seton. In 1845, the seminary church, Our Lady of Mercy, was built. The same year, Bishop Hughes convinced Jesuits from St. Mary's College in Maryland and St. Mary's College in Kentucky to staff the new school. The following year, St. John's College received its charter from the New York state legislature. Three months later, the first Jesuits began to arrive. Bishop Hughes deeded the college over but retained title to the seminary property of about nine acres. In 1847, Fordham's first school in Manhattan opened. The school became the independently chartered College of St. Francis Xavier in 1861. 

Interesting Fact:

In 1847, American poet Edgar Allan Poe arrived in the village of Fordham and began a friendship with the Jesuits that would last throughout his lifetime. In 1849, he published "The Bells," to which some traditions credit the college's church bells as the inspiration. 

1864: St. Joseph's Seminary, Troy, New York
Shortly before 1860, Archbishop Hughes had closed St. Joseph's Seminary, Fordham, having found it impracticable to recruit a competent staff of professors able and willing to conduct such an institution. The Sulpicians, to whom he then appealed, found themselves in no position to take this new charge upon themselves because their resources were taxed supplying the needs of seminaries already under their guidance, such as those of Montreal and Baltimore. It occurred to the Archbishop that the most practical way of providing priests for the growing diocese was the foundation of a provincial seminary to the Archbishop of New York and also the bishops of the province might send their ecclesiastical candidates.

1884: St. John's Seminary, Brighton, Mass.
Saint John's Seminary is located in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts and is a Catholic major seminary sponsored by the Archdiocese of Boston. The construction of the Boston Ecclesiastical Seminary began in 1881, and Archbishop John Joseph Williams entrusted the seminary to the Sulpician Fathers. The school was completed in 1884, and the first students began classes there on September 22, 1884. The Seminary's first rector was John Baptist Hogan. In 1892, the Seminary was incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts but in 1911, at the request of Archbishop William Henry O'Connell, the Sulpicians withdrew from the seminary.

1896: St. Joseph's Seminary & College (Dunwoodie), 

Yonkers, New York
St. Joseph's Seminary and College (pictured above), sometimes referred to as Dunwoodie, was founded by the Archdiocese of New York in 1896. Under Archbishop Michael Corrigan, it was originally staffed by Sulpicians and diocesan priests. The seminary's primary mission was to educate men studying for the priesthood. A plot of ground comprising sixty acres, known as Valentine Hill, half-way between Yonkers and Mount Vernon, was purchased for $64,146.77. The site was chosen because of it's proximity to New York. The laying of the cornerstone took place on May 17, 1891 by Archbishop Corrigan, in the presence of about eighty thousand persons.