St. Catherine Creek Italian Colony

Italian immigrants began moving to farms around St. Catherine Creek shortly after 1900, and Father Patrick Hayden of Natchez took an interest and helped them form a faith community. Their first frame church was dedicated on 20 April 1913. The founding families included Verucchi, Stallone, Monte, Viccinelli, Mascagni, Boschieri and Zacchiroli, later joined by Benedettini, Baroni, Carrazza, May and Gonnillini. Assumption stayed a mission of St. Mary until it became a parish in 1957, and the present brick church was dedicated in 1960.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forks of the Road — 2.1 mi
  The 1832-1863 slave market a mile east of downtown Natchez, the second busiest in the Deep South, now a Natchez National Historical Park site with exhibit panels.
• Melrose Estate — 2.5 mi
  A Greek Revival estate in Natchez, now a National Park Service site, interpreted through the people who were enslaved there as well as the McMurran family.
• Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture — 3.1 mi
  A museum in the old 1904 post office on Main Street, opened in 1991, covering slavery, Reconstruction and the Natchez civil rights movement.
• William Johnson House — 3.2 mi
  The brick home and shop block of a free Black barber and diarist in Natchez, who enslaved others himself and was shot by a neighbor in 1851.

More markers nearby

• Richard Wright — 2.3 mi
• Papa Lightfoot — 2.3 mi
• Birthplace of Jackson State University — 2.7 mi
• Natchez City Cemetery — 2.7 mi