By Jay Nies
One hundred forty-five years ago, the pastor of St. Peter parish in Quincy, Ill., preached about Augustine Tolton, then a child of 8, from the pulpit from his church. On July 6 of this year, a retired pastor of the same parish led a group of Catholic pilgrims in the footsteps of Augustine, who grew up to become the first full-blooded African-American priest in the United States.
A one-day bus pilgrimage from the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Jefferson City to Quincy, Ill., and Monroe City and Brush Creek, Mo., was part of the Diocese of Jefferson City’s yearlong golden jubilee celebration.
“The diocesan pilgrimage to Quincy and a chance to learn about the first Black American priest in the United States was a wonderful experience,” said Helen Laux, a member of Immaculate Conception parish in Jefferson City.
Fr. Tolton, born into slavery in 1854 in Ralls County, Mo., was baptized in the first St. Peter Church in Brush Creek. His mother escaped to Illinois, a free state, with him and his two siblings after her husband joined the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. Fr. Tolton, after searching for years for a way to answer his priestly calling from God, was ordained to the Holy Priesthood in Rome in 1886 and presided at his first Mass over the tomb of St. Peter — patron saint of the Brush Creek church in which he was baptized, and of the church and school he attended in Quincy. Upon his death at 43 in Chicago, Fr. Tolton was laid to rest in St. Peter Cemetery in Quincy.
Father Roy Bauer — a Quincy native, former pastor of St. Peter parish in Quincy, and eager Fr. Tolton historian — addressed the group of pilgrims from Missouri in Quincy’s present-day St. Peter Church, completed in 1961. The group had spent about three hours in transit, beginning with prayer led by Father Robert A. Kurwicki, spiritual director for the pilgrimage. In the large, quiet church in Quincy, Fr. Bauer talked about Fr. Tolton’s family and upbringing. He told of the priest’s mother, Martha Jane Chisley, a Kentucky-born slave who had been given to Steven and Susan Eliot of Brush Creek for a wedding present.
He talked about Peter Paul Tolton, a slave belonging to the Hager family of Brush Creek, having also been baptized in the church there, and named for the parish’s founder, Father Peter Paul LeFebre. “Now, all of these slave-owners were Catholic and they saw to it that they were baptized and received the sacraments and all,” Fr. Bauer stated. Mr. Tolton and Ms. Chisley were married in Brush Creek’s St. Peter Church in 1851, lived together in slave quarters on the Eliot farm, and brought three children into the world. The priest told of how Mr. Tolton escaped to join the Union Army, hoping to help secure victory and freedom for his family, and died of dysentery shortly thereafter. Fr. Bauer said northeastern Missouri was a dangerous place during the Civil War, with many slaves and freed blacks being killed or kidnapped and sold back into slavery in the South.
Hoping to spare her children (ages 10 and 8 years and 11 months) of that fate, Mrs. Tolton ran away with them, leading them on foot at night about 25 miles to Hannibal. With help from Union officers, they narrowly escaped across the Mississippi River in a rowboat. They walked to Quincy, where a local African-American mother took them in. “So between these two ladies, they raised these children,” Fr. Bauer said. “Mrs. Tolton worked in a cigar factory during the day, the other lady worked as a cleaning woman at night in an office.”
Father Herman Schaeffermeyer, at that time the pastor of German-speaking St. Boniface parish in Quincy, welcomed the Toltons to church and admitted the two older children into the parish school. “But there was such opposition, they had to withdraw,” Fr. Bauer said. So the family turned to St. Peter parish, a block away. “The priest at St. Peter’s said, ‘Do you want to come to my school? I’ll make sure there’s no trouble.’ You know, he was a powerful, controlling pastor, and he said, ‘There’s going to be absolutely no trouble.’” Fr. Peter McGirr, pastor of St. Peter parish, would only address complaints about the school’s new student from the pulpit during Mass. The School Sisters of Notre Dame provided the Tolton children a good Catholic education.
As a teen-ager, “Gus” Tolton worked in a cigar factory, then in a soda-bottling plant, and then as a custodian at St. Peter Church. He helped turn a former Protestant of church into St. Joseph Catholic School for Negroes. His home, St. Peter and St. Bonfiace churches, and the places he worked were all located within five blocks of each other. Fr. Tolton began to realize that he was being called to the priesthood, and Fathers Schaeffermeyer and McGill and several Franciscan priests at St. Francis Solanus College (now Quincy University) worked with Bishop Peter J. Baltes of Alton to find a seminary that would accept him.
Finally, Fr. Tolton applied to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith for admission to the Urban College in Rome. He was accepted into the missionary organization, given a solid seminary education and formation, and ordained to the Holy Priesthood in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.
“Gus Tolton, figuring all along that he would get sent to Africa, had studied African languages, because there were other African students at the Urban College,” Fr. Bauer noted. “It was not until the night before his ordination to priesthood that he was informed that he was not going to Africa but was being sent back to the United States — to the Diocese of Alton, which is now the Springfield diocese.”
His first Mass in Quincy was in the old St. Boniface Church, which was larger than the old St. Peter Church. The Mass was a huge event, and congregants spilled out into the street. The Alton bishop appointed Fr. Tolton pastor of the newly established St. Joseph parish for Negroes. The church was located within two blocks of the other two downtown parishes.
Fr. Tolton’s gift for preaching attracted many blacks and whites from throughout Quincy to Mass at St. Joseph. Several neighboring Protestant and Catholic pastors became jealous and sought to avoid losing their members. In addition, Fr. Tolton blessed a marriage — possibly interracial — “that Quincy society would not approve of,” Fr. Bauer noted. “None of the other priests in town would marry the couple, so they went to Fr. Tolton and were married.” Quincy swiftly turned on the priest. “It got to where Fr. Tolton just couldn’t take all the hassle anymore,” Fr. Bauer stated. Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan of Chicago invited Fr. Tolton to begin a Catholic apostolate to African-Americans in the nation’s third-largest city. Evangelizing and consoling the poorest people he had seen in his entire life, Fr. Tolton literally worked himself to death. He died of heat exhaustion on Aug. 8, 1897.
“But he always said he wanted to be buried back in Quincy,” Fr. Bauer said. “He appreciated so much what St. Peter parish had done for him.” Fr. Bauer noted that Fr. Tolton’s mother stayed in Chicago, working as a sacristan until her death. She was laid to rest in a Chicago cemetery. Fr. Bauer talked about the Aug. 8, 1997, Mass in St. Peter Church to recall the 100th anniversary of Fr. Tolton’s death. “We just had a wonderful celebration commemorating his life,” he said, noting that one of Fr. Tolton’s sister’s descendents was seated in the front pew, next to the mayor.
Today, the parish multipurpose building — which houses the school library, the pre-school and perpetual adoration chapel — is called Tolton Hall. A marble statue of Fr. Tolton stands on a pedestal outside St. Peter School. A bronze plaque quotes Fr. Tolton: “As long as I was in that school, I was safe. Everyone was kind to me. I learned the alphabet, reading and arithmetic.” At the end of Fr. Bauer’s presentation, the pilgrims paused to pray the “Hail Mary” together, followed by “St. Peter, Pray for us.” From there, they traveled to St. Peter Cemetery, where a large stone cross occupies the most prominent spot. On one side of the cross is buried Fr. Tolton, on the other is buried a beloved former St. Peter pastor.
Fr. Kurwicki led prayers for vocations to the priesthood, especially among African-Americans, and for an end to racial prejudice and discrimination, while Julie Wieberg, the pilgrimage’s organizer, placed a wreath at Fr. Tolton’s grave. After silent prayer and reflection, the pilgrims traveled to nearby St. Boniface Church, the modern successor to the church in which Fr. Tolton attended his first Mass in Quincy, and presided at his first Mass in that city 22 years later. Established in 1839, St. Boniface is the oldest parish in Quincy and the Springfield diocese.
There, the pilgrims prayed the Lord’s Prayer, the “Hail Mary” and the “Glory Be” for Pope Benedict XVI’s intentions, followed by, “St. Boniface, pray for us.”
From there, the pilgrims walked about two blocks to the probable site of the home in which Fr. Tolton and his family lived while he was growing up. They then walked to the former site of the St. Peter Church and school that Fr. Tolton knew — now the site of City Hall, following a 1947 tornado — and to the vacant site of Fr. Tolton’s St. Joseph Church, now a parking lot. Historical plaques mark both locations.
After lunch, the pilgrims traveled to Holy Rosary Church in Monroe City for Mass. Articles and literature about Fr. Tolton had been placed inside the church, to people read and prayed before Mass. Some went to confession. Father Donald Antweiler, pastor of the Monroe City and Indian Creek parishes and curator of old St. Peter Church in Brush Creek, presided and preached the homily. Fr. Kurwicki concelebrated. Local parishioners came to welcome and worship with the pilgrims.
The prayers Fr. Antweiler chose were from the Mass for Peace and Reconciliation. In his homily, Fr. Antweiler worked to place the now unquestionably repugnant institution of slavery into the context of local life in the 1850s — comparing the modern disgust with slavery to what people in the 23rd century might think about today’s abortion-on-demand mentality. “It’s just the way it was,” Fr. Antweiler said. “To question slavery was considered by many an attack on the very foundations of society. He talked about how many otherwise good, Christian people had gotten caught up in the 1850s’ society’s inextricably entrenched conviction that African slaves needed to be with their masters in order to be truly happy. “This Church participated in slavery. A lot of religious orders owned slaves,” he said, pointing out that they felt justified in doing so because of references to slavery in the Old and New Testaments.
“I just can’t imagine being a slave,” Fr. Antweiler stated. “They were part of the family, but they weren’t. “However, Fr. Antweiler stated, Catholics in the Salt River Valley treated their slaves as human beings, making sure they knew about Jesus, ensuring their access to the sacraments, and standing almost alone among white Christians in honoring slave marriages. He noted that there is no historical indication that whites and their African slaves worshipped separately in the old Brush Creek church. “We know that Augustine Tolton was baptized,” Fr. Antweiler said. “We know that his owner spent a lot of time with his family teaching the faith and about Jesus and who they are. So there were a lot of things going on.”
Fr. Antweiler talked about the Toltons’ escape to Illinois, and the discrimination they continued to encounter, even among their brothers and sisters in faith.
“There was tremendous prejudice in the Church,” Fr. Antweiler acknowledged. “And yet there were people who were heroically helpful — which is pretty much the way it always is. God calls us to keep standing for the faith, to go beyond, even though we’re always a bunch of weak, old human beings. He calls us, but He loves us where we’re at.” Fr. Antweiler said he is inspired by Fr. Tolton’s steadfast faith, and that of his mother, which helped them survive in a mostly white society that saw them as inferior. “It reminds me of our own weaknesses and God’s grace and strength,” he said. “In spite of crosses that that are beyond my comprehension, circumstances that I can’t even imagine putting myself in, he was steadfast and provided an example for us.”
From Monroe City, the pilgrims traveled by bus past the former Eliot Farm where Fr. Tolton was born, to the old St. Peter Church in Brush Creek, which descendants of the Eliots and their neighbors have been restoring for the past five years. In the newly rebuilt sacristy behind the 1862-vintage church, members of the Friends of Historic St. Peter Church in Brush Creek treated them to sweets and lemonade. In the peaceful old cemetery, the pilgrims prayed and pondered among the weathered headstones on one side, and the white, wooden crosses on the other side above the burial places of slaves whose names are now known to God alone.
After returning to Jefferson City, Fr. Kurwicki reflected on the power of reconciliation and the Eucharist, which had given Fr. Tolton the strength to overcome overwhelming prejudice and opposition and answer his calling to serve God in earthly life, in the priesthood, and now as an interceder in heaven. “It is the Eucharist that bids us to remember those who came before us, that sustains in our current endeavors, and gives us hope for the future and for our own salvation,” Fr. Kurwicki stated. “We hold our own Fr. Tolton up as a model for all are and all we hope to be.”
