Old St. Vincent Church

Steamboats arriving at Cape Girardeau.

On 19 Jun 2017 aboard the Queen of the Mississippi, Mary Frances and I docked at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where one hundred seventy years earlier, in the fall of 1847, Mary Frances’s great great grandparents Nicholas Wehner and Clara Schneider ended their riverboat journey. Nicholas and Clara claimed to have been married there, but their 26 Dec 1847 marriage probably occurred in neighboring Scott County.

Marriage record for Lorenz and Flora.

It was, however, in Cape Girardeau that Nicholas’s brother Lorenz and his bride-to-be Flora, freshly arrived from Germany, were wed at St. Vincent de Paul Church 14 Sep 1848. A Latin record of the marriage of “Laurentius Wehner et Flora Grisner” is preserved in the parish archive.

Only known view of the original
St. Vincent de Paul Church
(courtesy of Ronald F. Kirby).

As part of our recent paddleboat trip, Mary Frances and I had hoped to see the church where her GG Granduncle was married, but such could not be. On 27 Nov 1850 a tornado had destroyed the original church. We did, however, get to tour the present 1853 structure. Ronald F. Kirby, an author of the 2009 book Old St. Vincent Church, was our guide.

Present day St. Vincent de Paul from
the Queen of the Mississippi (2017).