Louis William Valentine DuBourg

Louis William Valentine DuBourg SS (French: Louis-Guillaume-Valentin DuBourg; 10 January 1766 – 12 December 1833) was a French Catholic prelate and Sulpician missionary to the United States. He built up the church in the vast new Louisiana Territory as the Bishop of Louisiana and the Two Floridas and later became the Bishop of Montauban and Archbishop of Besançon in France.

Born in the colony of Saint-Domingue, DuBourg was sent to France at a young age to be educated and entered the Society of Saint Sulpice. As a cleric and son of a noble family, the French Revolution forced him into exile in Spain. In 1794, DuBourg sailed to the United States and began teaching and ministering in Baltimore, and became the president of Georgetown College in 1795. He significantly improved the quality of the institution, but mounted a substantial debt and was ousted by the Jesuit owners of the college in 1798. DuBourg then founded a lay collegiate counterpart to St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. He also selected the site of Baltimore’s first cathedral and became the ecclesiastical superior to Elizabeth Ann Seton’s newly founded Sisters of Charity.