St. Peter's Catholic Church, also known as Brush Creek Church, is a historic

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

church near Rensselaer,

Ralls County, Missouri Ralls County is a county located in the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,355. Its county seat is New London. The county was organized November 16, 1820, and named for Daniel Ra ...

. After an original building constructed in 1845, the current church was built about 1862, and is a one-story, rectangular

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

building with

and

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

ornamentation. It is topped by a gable roof with

belfry The belfry /ˈbɛlfri/ is a structure enclosing bells for ringing as part of a building, usually as part of a bell tower or steeple. It can also refer to the entire tower or building, particularly in continental Europe for such a tower attached ...

.It features

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

s and has a frame two-room addition sheathed in weatherboard. (includes 5 photographs from 1979) The church is where

Augustus Tolton John Augustus Tolton (baptized Augustine; April 1, 1854 – July 9, 1897) was an African Americans, African American who served as the first Black Catholicism, Black Catholic priest in the United States, ordained in Rome in 1886. He was preceded ...

, the first openly

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

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 The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1980. A memorial to the enslaved buried in the church's cemetery was blessed in 2025.

References

African-American history of Missouri Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Missouri Roman Catholic churches completed in 1862 Churches in Ralls County, Missouri 1862 establishments in Missouri National Register of Historic Places in Ralls County, Missouri 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States {{RallsCountyMO-geo-stub