Precious Blood Catholic Church is a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

parish in

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their traditional territory was in the Southeastern United States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee as well in southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

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. Erected in 1903 and still an active

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

, the church historically owned two buildings constructed in its early years that have been designated as

historic site A historic site or heritage site is an official location where pieces of political, military, cultural, or social history have been preserved due to their cultural heritage value. Historic sites are usually protected by law, and many have been rec ...

Early parish history

Chickasaw's first Catholics attended

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

at St. Sebastian's Church,Scranton, S.S. ''History of Mercer County, Ohio and Representative Citizens''.

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

: Biographical, 1907, 239. nearly to the northwest. In 1897, the Chickasaw members erected a small church in their village for use as a

chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently. Often a chapel of ea ...

during the week. Because the villagers typically did not own horses, they found it difficult to reach St. Sebastian's, and sympathy grew for attempting to form their own parish; accordingly, in January 1903, the parishioners from Chickasaw left the church and took their possessions with them. Little more than one week later, St. Sebastian's was destroyed by a fire (now seen as highly suspiciousBrown, Mary Ann. ''Ohio Historic Inventory Nomination: St. Sebastian Catholic Church''.

Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...

, February 1977.), and parishioners were faced with the decision of rebuilding the church.Precious Blood Church History
, Marion Catholic Community, 2009. Accessed 2010-05-29. Ultimately, the parish was split into two parts: the remnant members of St. Sebastian's rebuilt their church, while the chapel in Chickasaw became the

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

for the newly formed Church of the

Precious Blood Blood of Christ, also known as the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in Christian theology refers to (a) the physical blood actually shed by Jesus Christ primarily on the Cross, and the salvation which Christianity teaches was accomp ...

. Fifty-eight families composed the parish's charter membership. The parishioners quickly began to expand their facilities. Before the end of 1903, the chapel had been expanded, and the following year saw the construction of a brick

rectory A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of religion. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, parsonage, rectory or vicarage. Function A clergy house is typically ow ...

at a cost of about $4,000. Membership grew rapidly; by 1907, the congregation had grown from thirty-eight families to seventy. In 1908, the church decided to erect a

parish school A parochial school is a private primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathematics and language arts. The ...

, 2007. Accessed 2010-05-29. located across the street from its rectory. Precious Blood Church is one of the youngest Catholic parishes in Mercer County; only

Our Lady of Guadalupe Our Lady of Guadalupe ( es, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe ( es, Virgen de Guadalupe), is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus associated with a series of five Marian apparitions, which are believed t ...

Church in Montezuma and St. Theresa of the Infant Jesus Church in Rockford are newer; Our Lady parish was only a mission when Precious Blood was established, and St. Theresa parish was created in 1936.

Buildings

Church

The first parish

church building A church, church building or church house is a building used for Christian worship services and other Christian religious activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 and 256. From the 11th thro ...

, originally a parish hall and then the chapel of ease, was built on a stone foundation in 1894 and 1895. Soon after the parish was established in 1903, a wooden addition was built onto the church; the reworked building was painted and new windows installed by early July of that year. As the parish's membership grew after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the old building was strained to hold the increased number of worshippers, and plans were laid for a replacement structure. Ground was broken for the new building in late 1965, and the structure was dedicated on February 23, 1967. This church is a brick structure built in the shape of a cross and equipped with a basement; its

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred place, such as a shrine. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This secondary use can be categorized into human sanctuary, a saf ...

has room for over four hundred worshippers.

School

The Precious Blood School is a two-

story Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...

brick structure that is supported by a

foundation Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 2.

St. Clair Shores St. Clair Shores is a suburban city bordering Lake St. Clair in Macomb County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It forms a part of the Metro Detroit area, and is located about northeast of downtown Detroit. Its population was 59,715 at the 2010 ...

: Somerset, 1999, 990. Built in the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

style by the

DeCurtins The DeCurtins family, sometimes written De Curtins, were involved in Midwestern U.S. church architecture. Anton De Curtins (J. A. De Curtins) was a Swiss people, Swiss immigrant who lived in Carthagena, Ohio and designed several Gothic Revival ar ...

brothers,Brown, Mary Ann, and Mary Niekamp. ', 4. National Park Service, July 1978. Accessed 2010-05-29. it features a central square

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

that rises above the rest of the building. Individuals enter the building through double doors that are topped by an elliptical

fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window, often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, and is sometimes hinged to a transom. Th ...

. Late in the 1950s, the

Ohio General Assembly The Ohio General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Ohio. It consists of the 99-member Ohio House of Representatives and the 33-member Ohio Senate. Both houses of the General Assembly meet at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus ...

enacted a law that provided for free high school education for all Ohio students. Because of this law, Chickasaw's public school system merged with that of the surrounding Marion Township, and the parish school closed. The parish has since sold the building; it is owned by a local organization of the

Veterans of Foreign Wars The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), formally the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, is an organization of US war veterans, who, as military service members fought in wars, campaigns, and expeditions on foreign land, waters, or a ...

Rectory

Like the school, the Precious Blood Rectory is a square, two-story brick structure built on an ashlar foundation. Featuring more of a vernacular style of architecture, the house is topped with a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

that is pierced by

dormer windows A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...

on all four sides. Its front door is surrounded by a

veranda A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure. Although the form ''veran ...

built with wooden columns and surrounded with a railing. Many parishes in the region built rectories in the early twentieth century in response to a directive issued by the

Archdiocese of Cincinnati The Archdiocese of Cincinnati ( la, Archidiœcesis Cincinnatensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or archdiocese that covers the southwest region of the U.S. state of Ohio, including the greater Cincinnati and Dayton metropolitan ...

, which provided that each parish should house its own

pastor A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and ...

. The Chickasaw rectory is typical of these structures, which predominantly are two-story rectangles with hip roofs and verandas. It is believed that this common design was influenced by the style made popular by the

Sears Roebuck Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

catalogue.

Recent history

Historic recognition

In 1979, the rectory and the former school were listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. Deemed historic because of their well-preserved architecture and their contributions to Ohio's history, they were among over thirty different places in far western Ohio related to the

Society of the Precious Blood The Society of the Precious Blood is an Anglican religious order of contemplative sisters with convents in England, Lesotho and South Africa. The sisters follow the Rule of St Augustine. History The Order dates its history from 1905 when Mother ...

that were listed on the National Register together. Although most of these buildings were churches, several rectories and schools were included as well. The tall,

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

towers featured by many of these churches have become the namesake for this region of western Ohio, which is nicknamed the "

Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches The Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches is a rural region in the western part of the U.S. state of Ohio, centered near Maria Stein, Ohio, Maria Stein in Mercer County, Ohio, Mercer County. Its name is derived from the dense concentration of large Cath ...

Present status

Today, Precious Blood is an active parish of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It is clustered with four other Marion Township parishes – St. John the Baptist in

Maria Stein Maria Stein (German language, German, literally Mary's stone or "Mary of the Rock") is an unincorporated area, unincorporated community in central Marion Township, Mercer County, Ohio, Marion Township, Mercer County, Ohio, Mercer County, Ohio ...

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Nativity of Mary, the Marymas or the Birth of the Virgin Mary, refers to a Christian feast day celebrating the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus. The modern canon of scripture does not record Mary's bir ...

Cassella Cassella AG, formerly Leopold Cassella & Co. and Cassella Farbwerke Mainkur AG, commonly known as Cassella, was a German chemical and pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main. Founded in 1798 in the Frankfurt Jewish Alley by ...

, St. Rose in St. Rose, and

St. Sebastian Saint Sebastian (in Latin: ''Sebastianus''; Narbonne, Narbo, Gallia Narbonensis, Roman Empire c. AD 255 – Rome, Roman Italy, Italia, Roman Empire c. AD 288) was an early Christianity, Christian saint and martyr. According to traditional beli ...

in Sebastian – to form the Marion Catholic Community. Two priests serve the cluster as pastors: Eugene Schnipke and Tom Brenberger. The entire cluster is part of the St. Marys

Deanery A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, the Evangelical Church in Germany, and the Church of Norway. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or residenc ...

.The Futures Project

. Accessed 2010-05-29.

References

External links

Marion Catholic Community
{{Cross-Tipped Churches Roman Catholic churches completed in 1904 Roman Catholic churches completed in 1967 Religious buildings and structures in the Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches Defunct Catholic schools in the United States Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Italianate architecture in Ohio Churches in Mercer County, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Mercer County, Ohio Clergy houses in the United States Christian organizations established in 1903 Churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Houses in Mercer County, Ohio 1904 establishments in Ohio 20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States Italianate church buildings in the United States