Germantown

Germantown is a unique community located 40 miles southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. It has a single Catholic church as its center and a rich German heritage. This is a pictorial history of the settlement that grew out of a desire for worship. The first German settlers came to Shoal Creek in 1833 and worshipped in a small house that contained neither benches nor chairs and had a split oak bench supported by four props that served as the communion rail. In 1837, the German homesteaders bought several tracts of land and reserved the ground in the center as church property. Preparations for the present stone building took two years, and it was completed in 1854. At that time, St. Boniface Catholic Church was the largest church in the state of Illinois. It is still referred to as the mother church of Clinton County.