The original St. Peter Church was built in 1845 and was constructed of planks. The current church, which was built out of stone in 1862, was closed in 1968. The church stands at the site of where Venerable Father Augustus Tolton (1854-97), a candidate for sainthood, was baptized in 1854. Born April 1854 into a family of enslaved people on a nearby plantation, Fr. Tolton eventually became the Roman Catholic Church’s first recognizably Black priest in the United States.

 When he was a child, Tolton’s family escaped to Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River by boat under the threat of gunfire. While Tolton hoped to become a priest, no U.S. seminary would accept him. Conquering insurmountable odds, Tolton ended up studying in Rome as a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. He was ordained to the Holy Priesthood in St. John Lateran Basilica on Holy Saturday, April 24, 1886.

 Thinking he would serve overseas after ordination, he was sent instead back to the St. Joseph Mission in Quincy, Illinois, where he had grown up. He ministered patiently and heroically there, as well as in St. Monica Church in Chicago, where he died of heatstroke on July 9, 1897, at age 43. The Chicago archdiocese opened a sainthood cause for him in 2011. Church authorities await a miracle from God through Fr. Tolton’s intercession in order to declare him blessed.

 The cemetery behind the church illustrates a sorrowful side of human history. While white parishioners were buried in the plots marked with large headstones, enslaved people were buried in unmarked plots. Research has revealed the locations of over 50 such graves, which are now marked with white crosses. The names of those buried there are unknown. A new headstone will be installed by these graves, marking the eternal freedom of the enslaved faithful in the arms of Christ: “Here lies human remains of souls known only to God. Enslaved in life; now free in life eternal.”