Mother Church of the Petersburg Parishes

Saints Peter and Paul Church, Petersburg (1835), was the mother
church for St. Joseph, Wapakoneta; St. John the Evangelist, Fryburg;
St. Lawrence, Rhine; and Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,
Botkins. All were founded by German-Catholic immigrants to west-
central Ohio. After the removal of the Wapakoneta Shawnee in 1832,
the land became available for purchase. The 1830s and '40s saw a
wave of devout German settlers who wished to practice their faith
in their new home, a desire served by missionary priests such as
Father Wilhelm Horstman. Father Horstman first visited the settlement
at Petersburg on May 8, 1835, presiding at Mass, baptizing, and
blessing a marriage. In April 1836, immigrants John and Anna Mary
Ruppert sold 40 acres of land in Pusheta Township to the trustees of
the Catholic Church and a log church was built at the Petersburg site.
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The parish was dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul. It initially served the
region, but often impassable roads prompted settlers to establish churches
closer to home, first at Wapakoneta (1839), then Fryburg (1850), Rhine
(1856), and Botkins (1865). The members of Sts. Peter and Paul fought
for their church, even constructing a new building in 1869, but the
parish dissolved by 1897. "Completely



surrounded by her children -
Wapakoneta, Fryburg, Rhine, and Botkins - the little log church at
Petersburg was needed no longer.... Like the good seed: in giving life
to new plants she loses her own. The ground where the mother church
died is hallowed ground...It is our duty to keep it and respect it."
Father Lawrence Tebbe, 1950

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