This is an updated reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in July 2015, just before the launch of this weblog.
A Catholic church in Tremont
By Jared Olar
Library assistant
Ben C. Allensworth’s 1905 “History of Tazewell County,” pages 822-823, provides a brief overview of the history of three churches in Tremont Township up to that time, including two paragraphs on Tremont’s two Protestant churches.
Tremont then had two Protestant churches – the Tremont Baptist Church, built around 1888, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, whose members then gathered for worship in the church of a defunct Universalist congregation, but were preparing to build their own new church.
It’s somewhat remarkable, however, that Allensworth’s history devotes four informative paragraphs on the history of Tremont’s Catholic church, more words than were used to describe the two Protestant churches. This might seem surprising today, for, while Catholics still live in Tremont, it has been a long time since the Catholic religion has had a visible presence there with its own place of worship.
Allensworth account said Tremont got its first Catholic priest in 1863 – the Rev. Jeremiah Murphy, an Irish priest who, with his assistant and fellow Irishman, the Rev. Peter Corcoran, had the care of Irish Catholics in Pekin and Tremont. Tremont was a mission church of the Pekin parish, and Father Murphy celebrated Mass every Sunday in both places.
In 1863, the Catholics of Tremont collected $800 to buy an old school house – a small building near the old Tremont Seminary – and turned it into a mission chapel. At the time, about 70 people would assist at Father Murphy’s Masses in Tremont. Most of Tremont’s Catholics had come over from County Waterford, Ireland.
“In 1875 an attempt was made to build a church, as the congregation had outgrown the old one,” Allensworth’s history says. “A committee was appointed, meetings were held and a subscription raised, but before the work was well begun Father Healy” – then pastor in Pekin and Tremont – “was recalled, and was succeeded by Father Halpin. Nothing further was done toward a new church until 1879, during Father W. O’Reilly’s pastorate, which began on the first Sunday in August, 1879.
“After mass a committee was appointed, whose names were as follows: Richard Lillis, William Connell, John Cullinane, James Cooney, Patrick Ryan, Michael Morrisey, John Fitzgerald and Nick Menard. A site was selected northeast of the old Court House. The committee began its work in earnest, and had the church ready for its first mass on Christmas morning in 1880. Adding to the height of the steeple, and placing a bell therein in 1882, completed the work of the entire church at a cost of nearly $3,000.”
The church, dedicated to St. Joseph, was located at the northeast corner of James and Washington streets. It served Tremont’s Catholic community until June 1902, when a storm severely damaged the church, requiring it to be repaired and remodeled. “It is now out of debt and had a congregation of about one hundred and twenty members, with Rev. D. L. Sullivan as pastor,” Allensworth’s 1905 account concludes.
As time went on, however, the membership of the small mission church dwindled in number, until it was closed and merged with St. Joseph’s Parish in Pekin. One of the surnames of the 1879 committee members, however, continues to be well known in Tremont, Pekin and the surrounding area – the Tremont-based construction company of R.A. Cullinan and Son was founded by one of Tremont’s old Catholic families, and a park in Tremont bears the family name, while Cullinan Properties owns East Court Village I & II on Pekin’s east end.
