Father Randy Fronic offered Mass at the Perkins Grove Catholic Cemetery (also known as the Theiss Cemetery) on Oct. 5.
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Father Randy Fronic offers a special Mass at the Perkins Grove Catholic Cemetery on Oct. 5. The cemetery remains as a reminder of the site of one of the earliest Catholic churches in northern Illinois. (Photo contributed)
Father Randy Fronic offered Mass at the Perkins Grove Catholic Cemetery (also known as the Theiss Cemetery) on Oct. 5. The cemetery remains as a reminder of the site of one of the earliest Catholic churches in northern Illinois. It is located one mile east and three miles south of Sublette in Lee County. The former church at this location was the forerunner of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Sublette, St. Patrick’s in Maytown and St. Mary’s in West Brooklyn.
The original church in Perkins Grove was established through the efforts of Bartholomaeus Theiss, one of the early settlers in the area. Theiss was a personal bodyguard of Napoleon Bonaparte before immigrating to America. The little group of Catholics increased rapidly and a Father Nicholas Stehle of LaSalle in some unknown way collected $400 at Lyons, France, which enabled the completion of the little church. The church often had between 150 and 200 people packed in it for Mass.
At one time, there was also a school in connection with the church, but that was abandoned before the church.
When the Illinois Central Railroad came through the area and platted the town of Sublette, the Perkins Grove settlement faded, so by 1868 a church was built in Sublette. At about the same time, churches were established in Maytown and West Brooklyn. This led to the demise of the Perkins Grove Catholic Church.
The little Perkins Grove Church was actually constructed by Bartholomaeus Theiss’s son-in-law, Paul Lindstrom, who was a gifted carpenter. The church had a hand-carved altar and communion rail, which was quite ornate. Over the years the church went into a state of disrepair and there was an effort to restore it, but the wind destroyed the church before it could be saved. The bell was saved by members of the Theiss family and it is located in the bell tower of a church in the northern part of the Rockford Diocese.
The cemetery contains graves of the ancestors of many local families and it is now being maintained by Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
It is only fitting that the Mass was offered in the cemetery to show respect to our early settlers who brought their strong faith to America and built these early landmarks.
