The remaining seven traveled overland by carriage to join Van de Velde at Georgetown in Washington, D.C.. Father Nerinckx, who had advised the young men on shipboard to prefer the Society of Jesus to any other ecclesiastical opportunity, had temporarily separated from the group when they landed in Philadelphia, and now visited them at the Jesuit seminary in White Marsh, Maryland to congratulate them before returning to Kentucky, from which his "begging trip" had begun more than a year before. The seven had begun their probationary periods there October 6, 1821.