Located just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, Holy Family has been a Catholic parish longer than any other parish in the country, long before the original Thirteen Colonies had declared independence from Great Britain.

What factors assist young persons in choosing to follow Jesus Christ as priests and religious? The three ingredient for this recipe: frequent prayer, a strong family environment, and parish priest actively encouraging vocations should not be underestimated. John Reed, a parishioner at Holy Family Church in Cahokia, Illinois for all his 59 years, and whose family history at the church goes back more than two and a half centuries, had invited us on a recent Sunday to join him at a Latin Mass.

Holy Family, in the Belleville Diocese which spans all of southern Illinois, “Belleville to Kentucky,” and includes 82 churches, is, he explained, the only parish to offer a traditional Latin Mass – every Sunday at 9:00 a.m. year-round and on half a dozen other special occasions (including the weekend of December 8, the anniversary of the long-ago first Mass said here). The church is also used for daily Mass during the summer, and often for weddings, funerals and special celebrations.

Reed, whose family joined this imposing, rustically elegant church in 1740, when Cahokia, now a town of 12,000, counted only about 200 residents, said Holy Family has been a Catholic parish longer than any other parish in the country. Located just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, the church, in French Colonial vertical-log style, was new more than three centuries ago.

He smiles at the thought of the vast age, saying that means the church was operating long before the Original Thirteen Colonies had declared independence from Great Britain, even several decades before George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and other founding fathers had entered this world.

Now known as Holy Family Historic Log Church, the original building was dedicated May 14, 1699 and is the oldest church between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi River, as well as the longest continuously operating parish in the United States, said Reed, who is the tenth generation of his family to belong. He is also chairman of the Friends of the Log Church and serves as a tour guide. Not surprisingly, he is well-versed in its lengthy history. He explains that although the church was restored in 1799, nearly all its 100-plus weighty vertical timbers, of black walnut, are original. They were, he adds, living trees when Columbus came to the New World in 1492.

And the center beam, a single uncut 80-foot stretch, also of black walnut, that runs the length of the nave, is from  a tree estimated to be “at least” 800 years old, he adds, nothing that it was set by “the local Voudrie brothers whose descendants are still here.” Since 1962, following Vatican II, Mass  has been said in English, “though some parishioners believe that unless it’s in Latin it doesn’t count,” he said with a smile. But because every diocese is “supposed to offer a traditional Latin Mass and people here wanted it, and because Holy Family was preparing for its tri-centennial, it received the designation from (then) Bishop James Kehlerer in 1994,” he said.

Reed notes that Holy Family, originally part of the historic Quebec Diocese, in 1779 became part of the Baltimore Diocese, the earliest in the United States. The first American Bishop was John Carroll, brother of Charles Carroll, a delegate from Maryland to the Continental Congress, who was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. Since then Holy Family has been part of five other dioceses: Bardstown, Kentucky; Chicago; St. Louis; Springfield, Illinois; and ultimately Belleville, around 1880. Suplicians were here originally, but Oblates are here now, said Reed. Father Paul Wienhoff, 52, is the priest at Holy Family, and also serves at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the neighboring town of Dupo, another early French community.

Holy Family is unusual in that the parish has two functional church buildings, said Reed. A German Gothic style stone church was built next door in 1893, and replaced eighty years later with the current modern building, which seats 500. Mass is said there in English Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8:00 a.m., Saturday at 5:00 p.m., Sunday at 10:00 a.m., and in Spanish Saturday at 7:00 p.m. (Reed notes that he was married at Holy Family the same year the new church was built, 1973, but in the old lgo church, which to him “meant more.”)

Of the historic church’s origins, Reed explains that three Sulpician missionaries from Quebec had come to Cahokia – in what was then called Illinois Country – to establish a mission for the purpose of converting the local Tamarora Indians, a “friendly and docile” tribe of about 400 members. They reached the town on December 8, 1698, the Feat of the Immaculate Conception, offered the first Mass here on the banks of the Mississippi, then continued south to what is now Arkansas. However, failing to find a better site for a mission, the party returned to Cahokia, where they chose a location on high ground along Rigolet Creek, a small Mississippi River tributary that provided easy access, said Reed.

Parishioners in the town “dressed,” or planned the black walnut logs and built their church, a “post on sill” structure measuring 85 feet  long, 35 feet wide and 35 feet high, which could seat 120, as does the 1799-restored church. The foundation, Reed notes, “has not been disturbed for more than 300 years.” NO nails were used in either the original construction or the restoration, only wooden pegs, which in place are clearly visible.

He points out that the 12-inch square, 18-foot long logs that form the walls are not precisely vertical, but lean in about eight inches at the top, which provides greater stability. A “Norman truss” holds up the roof, he adds, and would have been hefted into place “by a lot of guys using ropes and pulleys.” Plaster – of lime, mud, gravel, sand, and horse, pig and human hair – was used to chink between the logs. When the chinking was replaced in the 1940’s in preparation for the parish’s 250^th anniversary, a mix as close as possible to the original was used, and several sections of the original ere left in place.

“This church was put together well,” Reed says with a smile. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be here today.” The massive New Madrid earthquake of 1810-11, so violent it caused the Mississippi to flow upstream for several days and destroyed many other area buildings, left Holy Family intact. A fire had caused minor damage at the church in 1740 – the same year Reed’s ancestors came to Cahokia from Badonville, France – but did not prevent services from being held in the 1840’s and are now used as a sacristy (on the left) and as a Chapel to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The altar in the Lady Chapel to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The altar in the Lady Chapel is believed to be the church’s original altar. Today’s Main altar is from 1850.

Reed notes that the historic church (which Abraham Lincoln is known to have visited) was one of five in North America built in the French Colonial vertical-log style, but is the only one still in use. Three, in Canada, are still standing but in ruins, and have long been abandoned, he said. The fourth, in St. Francisville, Louisiana, has been incorporated into a newer building and is unrecognizable.

The Cahokia church and nearby courthouse, similar in style, “are the only building still around between here and Oregon that Lewis and Clark would have seen during their 1804-06 expedition,” said Reed. He adds that the courthouse was originally a residence, built in 1740 by his Badonville ancestor, farmer John la Pancie, who would later fight in the Revolutionary War.

A small group of Sisters of St. Joseph, from France, opened Holy Family School here in 1835, and though they soon moved across the Mississippi to the town of Carondelet, now part of St. Louis (where their province house is today), lay teachers kept the school open until Precious Blood nuns from the nearby town of Ruma arrived in 1892 “to stay 100 years.” Three years ago Holy Family (which Reed had attended) and St. Catherine LaBoure parish schools were combined at Holy Family, and the name was changed to Corpus Christi Elementary School, which serves 72 students.

Asked if any Holy Family parishioners have entered religious vocations, Reed immediately names four, though he says there are others. Among them: Monseigneur Joseph Trombley, who grew up here and in the early 1900’s became pastor at Holy Angels Church in East St. Louis, Illinois, and Father Albert Jerome, pastor here for ten years before his death in 2001; both were Oblates. Others include Sister Janet McCann, Precious Blood, who is principal of Theo Bauman School in East St. Louis, and former teacher Sister Susan Catherine LaBoure, School Sisters of St. Francis of Christ the King, who will say her first vows in August 2008 in Lamont, Illinois.

After the Latin Mass (the first we’d heard since we were teenagers!) Reed took us on an hour-long tour of the church, all the while explaining its history. But he saved some special treats for last: several invaluable historical artifacts that until recently were stored – unknown to anyone at the church – in cardboard boxes at the rectory.

Among the treasures area beautiful chalice of brass overlaid with gold, with the date “1818” scratched into the bottom of the base; a Latin Missal printing in Antwerp, Belgium in 1668; and a Latin French Bible printed in Paris in 1568. The Missal and Bible, plus another brass and gold chalice, came here from Quebec with the Sulpician missionaries in 1669.

Reed had one last surprise. It’s the “oldest thing here,” he said, carefully unwrapping what appeared to e an icon, although “experts have told us it’s Coptic, not Russian.” The piece, an antique wood rectangle, 12 inches by ten inches, one inch thick, is magnificent, featuring stylized paintings of the Holy Family, the Evangelista and others. The work – which long predates the church – was a gift ten years ago from Joseph Desloges also provided major funding for the log church’s 1940’s restoration.

Reed says the St. Louis Art Museum h as expressed interest in the piece, and because it could be better preserved and displayed there, it may one day move across the river, “though for now we’re honored to have it here.”

“Our church has been around a long time,” he said. “but when it was new this icon was already 1200 years old.”

Holy Family Historic Log Church is located at

116 Church Street in Cahokia, Illinois

For information or to arrange a tour call

618-337-4548 or 618-332-8493.

Vocations and Prayer

The Catholic Magazine on Vocation Ministry

April - June 2008, #72 Vol. XVII No. 2