SW of Rensselaer on SR 2, Rensselaer, Missouri. County/parish: Ralls.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places November 14, 1980. NRIS 80002392.
1 contributing building.Also known as:
St. Peter's Catholic Church, also known as Brush Creek Church, is a historic Catholic church near Rensselaer, Ralls County, Missouri.
After an original building constructed in 1845, the current church was built about 1862, and is a one-story, rectangular limestone building with limestone and sandstone ornamentation. It is topped by a gable roof with belfry.It features lancet windows and has a frame two-room addition sheathed in weatherboard.
The church is where Augustus Tolton, the first openly African-American Catholic priest, was baptized; he has since been put on the path to sainthood. The church was closed in 1968, reduced to the status of a chapel, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. A memorial to the enslaved buried in the church's cemetery was blessed in 2025.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63820043