St. Peter's Church Jefferson

The present fine church went up a little later than the bronze's 1890. The parish's 1989 National Register nomination puts the start of work in August 1891 under Frank X. Babue, a Sioux City builder, with first services in February 1892 and dedication that July. Its bell tower rises 125 feet above the flat plain, and parish records give two costs, $17,800 and $14,224. Henry Goering painted the Ascension mural behind the altar between 1926 and 1935, and services were held in French until 1939.

What the plaque says

St. Peter's Church Jefferson The vicinity of Jefferson, even before the organization of Dakota Territory in 1861, was a French-Canadian community and Catholic ser- vices were held sporadically prior to the advent of Father Pierre Boucher in 1867. In 1862 a small log building north of the present church was used as a school house and church where services were held. Father Boucher had a pastorate extending over a vast area of South- eastern Dakota and about twenty-five French-Canadian families formed the nucleus of his congregation here. Soon after his coming, a large wooden church was built and served until 1890, when the present fine church was erected during the pastorate of Father Cyrille St. Pierre. Father Boucher died in 1900 at Quebec. The Reverend Charles F. Robinson was the pastor from 1894 until 1924 and he lies buried in the adjacent church yard, whose grave stones abound in the names of parishioners and tells a story of its own. In 1889 a school and convent were built and these were replaced by the present parochial school building in 1951. The large wooden cross in the cemetery is a replacement for the rude cross placed therein in May, 1876, when Father Boucher led a eleven mile pilgrimage, ending in the church yard at Jefferson, invoking divine aid against the besetting grasshopper plague. Erected in 1966 in memory of the Forest C. Roach family

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ponca State Park — 7.6 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.
• National Music Museum — 22 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 27 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.

More markers nearby

• Grasshopper Cross — steps away
• Postmasters Jefferson — steps away
• First Flour Mill in Dakota — steps away
• Twelve Mile House — 0.4 mi