(Part 2)

The Early Priests

Missionaries, of course, were the first to provide convenient services for Algonquin area Catholics. In the later part of the 19th century, Father Joseph Molitor, pastor of the first Bohemian parish (Blessed Agnes) in Chicago, regularly visited Algonquin. In 1911, Bishop Peter J. Muldoon provided Algonquin with twice a month services by the appointment of Father P. J. Hogan, a hospital chaplain from Saint Joseph Hospital in Elgin, to that duty. Mass was celebrated by Father Hogan in Kelahan's Hall, located at 329 Jefferson Street at the corner of Railroad and Jefferson Streets just north of the Northwestern Railway tracks. That building stood until the early 1970's. (It remained an empty lot until the old Lutheran Parsonage was moved onto the property when Saint John Lutheran built their new activity center.)

Kelegan Hall, where mass was first said in Algonquin, is pictured as the white building in the lower center of this picture