Congregations (long)

Catholics were the first to arrive in St. Louis, coming early with the Spanish and French explorers in the late eighteenth century. The Catholic church was well established in St. Louis by the time Protestant Americans began migrating from the east. In the early 1800s, many Protestants and Jews arrived in the Louisiana Purchase Territory as Missouri became a state. As numbers grew, each denomination formed congregations.

Baptists were the first Protestants to establish a congregation at Fee Fee Road in St. Louis County in 1807. On our website for Baptists and Anabaptists, you will find primarily membership lists. This reflects their practice of baptizing at the time the individual chooses to join the church, hence generating membership, rather than baptism, records.

Reformed congregations arrived in St. Louis after 1811. But, due to a “Plan of Union” agreement then in effect in the U.S. between two reformed groups—Congregational and Presbyterian—initially only Presbyterian churches were established here because the plan allowed the Presbyterians to claim all reformed churches west of the Hudson River and the Congregationalists to claim those in New England. In 1811, when Stephen Hempstead, a hero of the Revolutionary War, moved to St. Louis, he found no reformed churches, only Catholics and Baptists. Due to his persistent pleas to the Congregational Missionary Society of Connecticut, the society sent Rev. Salmon Giddings to St. Louis in 1816. Dr. Giddings founded twelve churches in Missouri and Illinois, but because of the plan, all Giddings’s early churches became Presbyterian.

In the 1820s, St. Louis’s population began exploding exponentially with immigrants, including Irish Catholics. That led the already established Catholic churches to designate some congregations as Irish. This practice continued as other nationalities arrived.

By the 1830s, large numbers of Germans began arriving, first Evangelical Germans, then Lutheran Germans. Their congregations are easily confused. The confusion arrived because at that time in Germany, there were then two different Protestant churches—Lutheran and Evangelical, the latter a reformed church. Then from 1817 through the 1830s, the then thirty-nine independent German nations gradually began re-establishing a single religion in each nation/state by merging these two Protestant churches together as one Evangelical-Lutheran church. However, many Germans of that time so strongly objected to this church union, they began emigrating to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Midwestern U.S. states, hoping to maintain their separate Evangelical or Lutheran congregations in the U.S. Hence, in the U.S. we have three groups—Evangelical churches, which later merged with other reformed congregations and are now UCC; traditional Lutheran churches with separate Synods, such as the Missouri Lutheran Synod; and United Evangelical Lutherans, the majority of today’s Lutherans.

After 1840, migrants and immigrants formed still more religious congregations in St. Louis, including Orthodox, Reformed, and Conservative Jewish congregations and Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational, Christian, and Orthodox churches. Over time, still more religions were added until by the end of the twentieth century, St. Louis had a congregation for virtually every known religion. As of this time, we have no records of those newer congregations, but if/when we obtain any, we will add them to our website.

Major religions, such as Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, were founded centuries before the common era (BCE). The rise of Christianity began the common era (CE), and Islam emerged in 610 CE. In 1054, Christianity split between Roman Catholics and Orthodox.

In 1517, Martin Luther in Germany is credited with beginning the Protestant Reformation. Other religious thinkers of the time throughout Europe, such as Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, Menno Symes, and Thomas Cranmer, also founded Protestant denominations. Then there was Henry VIII, who although not a theologian, solved his re-marriage problem by renouncing the Pope’s control of the church in England and proclaiming himself head of the English church without changing it much until others led this church to Protestantism.

All Protestants believe in salvation by God’s grace should one choose to accept it, rejecting Catholic indulgences. Each Protestant denomination’s additional modifications on Catholicism differ slightly. It is easiest to distinguish the Protestants by thinking of them in five separate groups, each of which shares modifications with others in the group. The exception is group five, in which each denomination was founded by unique leaders with unique beliefs.

1. Anglican, with Bishop organization and infant baptism and the above-mentioned unusual founding—the Church of England, Episcopal, and Methodist
2. Lutheran, with Bishop organization and infant baptism—the Lutheran Church
3. Reformed, with “democratic” organization and infant baptism—Huguenot, Reformed, Evangelical, Presbyterian, Congregational (Puritan), and Church of God
4. Baptists and Anabaptists, with adult-choice baptism—Baptist, Brethren, Christian, Mennonite, and Amish
5. Unique—Hussite, Moravian, Unitarian, Friends (Quaker), Latter-Day-Saints (Mormon), Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah Witness, Pentecostal, Christian Science, and many newer independent Protestants

Protestants, Catholics, and Jews arrived in the colonial United States and largely remained segregated in different colonies during the colonial period. Puritans (reformed) spread throughout New England. New York was founded by the Dutch Reformed and welcomed the first Jews. Rhode Island saw the first Baptists, New Jersey the first Lutherans, and Maryland the first Catholics. Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia began as Anglican. Methodists came later to several states.

Because of its welcoming policies, Quaker Pennsylvania quickly absorbed numerous Protestant groups: Presbyterians, Lutherans, Evangelicals, Brethren, Moravians, Mennonites, and Amish, all of which migrated down the valley between the mountains into Virginia, the Carolinas, and beyond. As the U.S. expanded in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, immigrants greatly increased the number of Catholics, Lutherans, Evangelicals, and Orthodox.

Because the multiple Protestant denominations in the U.S. can be confusing, researchers need to learn more about the congregations in their area and time period. For example, in early Pennsylvania, researchers learn to distinguish the various types of Brethren churches. In St. Louis and other Midwestern states, researchers of German descent pay particular attention to the distinction between Lutherans and Evangelicals.

• Baptist Churches in St. Louis
• Baptist Clergy Members
  
  

Baptists were the first Protestants to establish a congregation in St. Louis County. Fee Fee Baptist Church was formed in 1807. Baptist preachers generally worked on a circuit, traveling from one area to another, often holding services in the homes of members. The churches’ membership lists reflect their practice of baptizing at the time the individual chooses to join the church, hence generating membership, rather than baptism, records. You may also find marriage and death records.

Catholics were the first religious group to arrive in St. Louis, coming early with the Spanish and French explorers prior to St. Louis becoming part of the United States. The Catholic church was well established in St. Louis by the time Protestant Americans and others began migrating from the east. Catholic churches usually were established and stayed at one location. If two parishes merged, the church selected a new name. Typically, the new church did not use the name of either of the two old parishes.

• Catholic Churches in St. Louis
• Catholic Clergy in St. Louis
  
  

To use Catholic records successfully, researchers need to know where their ancestors lived; then locate the closest parish to the residence. Carefully look at the background of the parish, as many were created for and catered to particular ethnic groups. Records that are more recent are in English, but the early documents are probably in the native language of the church. Remember that church records may have referred to your ancestor by a variety of names, including Latin, first and/or middle, initials, etc.

• The Guide to St. Louis Catholic Archdiocesan Parish Records by Christy Hughes
• Census of the early Catholic graveyard, 1776
  (Oldest Catholic cemetery in St. Louis; located near what today is the Old Cathedral on the Arch grounds)
• Catholic Baptisms, St. Louis, Missouri: 1765–1840
  (Approximately 25 MB) Contains all known Catholic baptismal records in the St. Louis area from the time of the city’s founding to 1840 from St. Louis, King of France (the Old Cathedral) close to the Mississippi River in the city, starting in 1774; St. Ferdinand de Florissant, starting in 1794, to the north, and Sts. Mary and Joseph, starting in 1826, in Carondelet, to the south.
• Catholic Marriages, St. Louis, Missouri: 1774–1840
  (Approximately 20 MB)

These books have been entirely re-indexed by St. Louis Genealogical Society volunteers, so you may want to start with the indexes, located on the pages of the three churches.

The Christian Church formed through many mergers of different Christian congregations. Hence, it is often known by other names, such as the Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ. After several naming changes in the twentieth century, today various congregations are known as Christian Churches Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Independent Churches of Christ.

• Christian Churches in St. Louis

In the early 1800s, Barton W. Stone (formerly Presbyterian) and Rev. Thomas and his son Alexander Campbell (formerly Presbyterian and Baptist) founded the Christians. Rev. Campbell, who lived in western Pennsylvania and western Virginia, withdrew from the Presbyterians, forming the independent Brush Run Church, affiliated with the Baptists, who then expelled them. Meanwhile, Stone held several revivals in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, from 1801–1804. The two groups both wished to continue as Christians, although they used separate names for several decades. In 1832, in Lexington, Kentucky, the groups merged as the Christian Church or the Disciples of Christ. By 1849, they had national conventions, a Missionary Society, and religious journals.

These congregations may have marriage and death records available. But, on our website, especially for the earliest years, you may find only membership records since individuals are baptized at the time they join the church. However, in the late twentieth century some congregations began infant “dedications,” for which they may or may not have created records.

The Episcopalian church descends from the Church of England or Anglican church. The first Episcopal church opened in St. Louis in 1819 in what is now called Christ Church Cathedral. Each congregation maintains its own records. The Archives of the Diocese of Missouri has some records for closed facilities.

• Episcopal Churches in St. Louis City and County
• Episcopal Clergy in St. Louis
  
  

So far, StLGS has no Episcopal records, but we do have a listing of all the churches and their clergy. Contact the Archives of the Diocese of Missouri, 1210 Locust St., for more information on church records. St. Mark’s Library in New York City also has a large collection of historic Episcopalian records, including information on most bishops. That library is part of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.

Jews have been living in St. Louis since 1807, when Joseph Philipson, a merchant, arrived in the city. This early group of immigrants was primarily German. The first recorded prayer session with at least ten people (a minyan) was on 12 September 1836, or the first day of Tishri, in the Jewish year 5597. The occasion was Rosh Hashanah, and they used a rented room over Max’s Grocery and Restaurant, on the corner of Second and Spruce Streets (now occupied by the St. Louis Arch grounds).

St. Louis Genealogical Society sponsors an active Jewish Special Interest Group (SIG) that meets four times each year.

• Jewish SIG
• Timeline of Jewish History in St. Louis
• Jewish Cemeteries in St. Louis
• Jewish Funeral Home Records (Berger and Ridskopf-Roth)
• Jewish Clergy in St. Louis
  
• Jewish Congregations in St. Louis
  

In 1840, about forty or fifty Jews were living in St. Louis. They banded together to buy a plot of land outside the city limits for a cemetery. On 3 October 1841, the first Jewish congregation, United Hebrew Congregation, was formed, and the cemetery officially became the United Hebrew Cemetery. Today that area is in the midtown of St. Louis, and the cemetery has long been relocated.

The congregation was also known as the Polish Congregation, and it was strictly Orthodox. Their first meeting place was rented at Broadway and Locust. Later, they moved to the Masonic Hall on First and Market Streets.

As a strictly Orthodox congregation, United Hebrew was just not liberal enough for many of the newly arriving German Jews. During the 1840s and 1850s, several new congregations began, and over the next few decades, congregations that embraced Reform Judaism as well as Orthodox Judaism became well entrenched in the city.

By 1847, Emanu El Congregation, consisting mostly of German Jews, was formed, and in 1848, they established a second Jewish cemetery. By 1854, there were enough Jews in St. Louis to warrant a rabbi, and by 1855, the first synagogue was constructed. By then, Emanu El and a group called B’nai B’rith had combined, and the new congregation, called B’nai El, built their structure on Sixth Street between Gratiot and Cerre Streets.

By 1900, there were about 40,000 Jews living in St. Louis. There were four Jewish cemeteries, four Jewish newspapers, two funeral chapels, a Hebrew Free School, and many Jewish charitable organizations.

When Eastern European Jews began immigrating to the United States in large numbers, from 1880 to 1920, many made their way to St. Louis. For the most part, these new immigrants created a Jewish “ghetto.” They lived in an area on the near north side of St. Louis, between Cass Avenue on the north and Delmar Boulevard on the south, spreading westward from the riverfront. As the population grew, they continued moving to the west, first to Jefferson Avenue, then to Grand Avenue. By the 1940s, as the city expanded westward, so did the Jewish population into the Central West End of the city and to University City and Clayton in St. Louis County.

St. Louis today is home to about 60,000 Jews. There are numerous Jewish congregations and cemeteries as well as a Holocaust museum, theater, charities, schools, and a nationally-known hospital.

Today in St. Louis, we have Lutheran churches affiliated with both the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). For more about the distinction between the Evangelical and the Lutheran churches and their union in Germany, see the section above called “Religion in St. Louis.”

• Lutheran Churches in St. Louis City and County
• Lutheran Clergy in St. Louis
  
• Flashes (magazine)
• Lutheran Orphans’ Home Ladies Auxiliary Cookbook
  
  

Lutheran Germans arrived in St. Louis in 1839 and formed the first Lutheran church in St. Louis, Trinity Lutheran on Soulard at Eighth Street. In 1848, Immanuel Lutheran organized at Eleventh and Franklin. And in 1858, Holy Cross Lutheran formed in an area north of Arsenal Street that extended west to the city limits. All of these congregations were initially part of the Missouri Synod. The first English speaking Lutheran church in the area was St. Mark’s Evangelical-Lutheran in Clayton (ELCA), established in 1867.

The present United Methodist Church formed from several earlier related congregations. Predecessor congregations of the United Methodist Church include:

• Methodist Churches in St. Louis City and County
  
• Methodist Clergy in St. Louis
  
• Wives of Ministers of the St. Louis German Methodist Conference (births, deaths, and marriages)
  
  

Because Methodism was founded in the eighteenth century in England by John Wesley and former Anglicans, it has the same organizational structure of including bishops as the Anglican church. In America, Wesley’s assistant Francis Asbury organized the Methodist religion. Because there was a scarcity of clergy and Methodism was a newer religion, circuit riders (itinerant preachers) covered large routes on horseback to bring services into the frontier. Their heroic efforts made Methodism one of the largest Protestant denominations in the U.S. by the middle of the nineteenth century.

Until 2004, Missouri was divided into Missouri East and Missouri West Annual Conferences. The repository for the Missouri East Conference is the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. The repository for the Missouri West Conference is the Smiley Memorial Library at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri. Central Methodist University also has an online clergy file. Other notable resources include the Historical Society of the United Methodist Church and the General Commission on Archives and History, which includes names and addresses of Missouri contacts and a searchable database of holdings.

Printed Methodist journals are also a useful resource. One Methodist newspaper is the Christian Advocate
. Also, Missouri conferences publish the United Methodist Reporter in regional versions. For more than 100 years, Annual Conference Journals have been published, some as early as 1858. Check with Methodist repositories for extant copies.

(We thank StLGS volunteer Joyce Mercer for researching the original text for this denomination.)

Presbyterians and Congregationalists were originally one group, but in the early 1800s, they formed a Plan of Union that split the groups by geography. The Presbyterians in St. Louis were part of the reformed group of Protestants that arrived in Pennsylvania primarily during the eighteenth century. They quickly moved south and west, following the valley between the mountain chains into Virginia, the Carolinas, and beyond.

• Presbyterian Churches in St. Louis
  
• Presbyterian Clergy in St. Louis
  
  

On 4 October 1816, in St. Louis, Rev. Salmon Giddings organized Bonhomme Presbyterian Church in the log cabin home of Captain Joseph Conway. The following Sunday, 6 October, he held the first worship service, where he ordained elders, one of whom was Stephen Hempstead, a Revolutionary War hero who helped organize the church. Bonhomme became the second Presbyterian congregation organized west of the Mississippi River (the first is in Caledonia, Missouri) and the first in the St. Louis area. Altogether, in twelve years of ministry, before his death in 1828, he organized six congregations each in Missouri and Illinois. (See the section above on “Religion in St. Louis” for more information.)

Like other denominations, the Presbyterians have split up over time. Currently, the largest group is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which has its national offices in Louisville, Kentucky. It was formed in 1983. The Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is located at 1001 Craig Rd., Ste. 170, in St. Louis County. Two other Presbyterian denominations in St. Louis are the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church of America. The Historical Center of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) is located on the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary at 478 Covenant Lane.

(Our thanks to Kevin T. Kelly, then president of St. Louis Genealogical Society, who wrote an article about Presbyterian churches in St. Louis for the 1981 St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly, volume 14, number 4, pages 127–128, and to Rev. Edward C. Wicklein, former pastor of the Pacific Presbyterian Church, who contributed another article in the 1982 St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly, volume 15, number 2, pages 41–43.)

The United Church of Christ, a reformed denomination, formed in 1957 through a merger of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. It includes Congregationals, Reformed, and Evangelicals.

• List of UCC Churches in St. Louis
• List of UCC Clergy in St. Louis
  
  

The German Evangelicals arrived first in St. Charles in 1833 and in St. Louis in 1834. These Reformed denomination Germans established Holy Ghost Evangelical Church in St. Louis in 1834, prior to the arrival of the first Lutherans. Two additional Evangelical churches formed in St. Louis County in 1838, in what is now Mehlville and Des Peres. By 1841, Holy Ghost church also added two more Evangelical churches in the City—St. Marcus on the south and St. Peter on the north. For more about the distinction between the Evangelical and the Lutheran churches and their union in Germany, see the section above called “Religion in St. Louis.”

After 1852, the Plan of Union between Congregationalists and Presbyterians had ended (see the section on “Religion in St. Louis” above) and Congregationalists in St. Louis established their own church. The First Trinitarian Congregational Church and Society of St. Louis organized on 12 January 1852, at 6th Street near Franklin with members from Third Presbyterian Church. In 1931, the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches formed as a merger of the National Council of Congregational Churches and the Christian Connection.

Today these formerly distinct German Evangelical churches are mainly merged with other Reformed congregations. In 1934, the Evangelical Synod of North America merged with the Reformed Church forming the Evangelical and Reformed Church, which then in turn merged with the Congregationalists in 1957 to form UCC.