Glenmary Home Missioners was founded in 1939 by Rev. William Howard Bishop, a Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Fr. Bishop was invited by The Most Reverend John Timothy McNicholas, O.P. from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to found the community within Archdiocese. At that time, he noted that more than one-third of the counties of the United States, mostly in Appalachia and the South, had no resident priest. Glenmary's name comes from combining the name of the place where the Society was founded, Glendale, Ohio, with the name of Mary, the society's patroness under her title "Our Lady of the Fields."