Egypt Catholic Church and Rectory

About this property

St. Joseph's Catholic Church is a historic Roman Catholic church in Egypt, Ohio, United States. Built in 1887, this church is home to a small Catholic parish, and it has been declared a historic site because of its well-preserved Gothic Revival architecture. The original settlers of far southern Auglaize County were overwhelmingly Catholic. At this period, prior to 1850, the region was part of the Great Black Swamp; consequently, travel was extremely difficult. An unsubstantiated claim by a former preacher of St. Josephs Catholic Church suggests that Egypt was named by German immigrants in the early-1830s after a settler described the swampy area back then as being “made by a dab of mud that fell from the wheelbarrow of God.” However, the town name is actually derived from the hometown of the mother of a couple of the earliest pioneers in the area. John Henry Osterloh immigrated from a town called Halter in Lower Saxony, Germany. He purchased a farm in what would later become Egypt in 1829 – 1830. His mother was from Aegypten in Lower Saxony, Germany. John Henry Osterloh died from a typhus epidemic in 1833. One of his brothers, John Albert Osterloh (1814 – 1901) arrived in 1834 at the age of 20, took over possession of John Henry's farm, & continued purchasing more land surrounding it. The residents got tired of traveling nearly 4 miles to the town of Minster to get to church, so they petitioned to get one in Egypt in 1852 & St. Josephs Catholic Church was subsequently built. John Albert Osterloh donated land for the church & adjoining cemetery. Egypt's first settlers were members of St. Augustine's Church in Minster, approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) to the east. Because of the swampy character of the land, wheeled transit was nearly impossible; the men of the community could only travel to St. Augustine's on horseback, and the women and children were almost never able to worship at all. At the same time, the membership of St. Augustine's was growing to the point that its facilities were severely strained. Therefore, a movement arose for the creation of a separate parish in Egypt, and in 1852, three men were sent to petition Archbishop Purcell for a separate church. The archbishop granted permission for the erection of the parish in that year; it was dedicated to St. Joseph, and subscriptions soon raised $800 for the construction of a church. Once the members had agreed on the basic architectural elements of their church, they summoned multiple contractors for the bidding process. Each of the contractors independently named $800 as the cost of erecting the new church; consequently, parishioner Henry Rolfes was placed in charge after he named his price at just $300 and the cost of some materials. Even after the cost of all materials was deducted, enough money remained to pay a priest for the first year. Originally, the parish had no priest of its own; Mass was typically celebrated by priests from St. John's in Maria Stein or St. Augustine's in Minster. After four years, a rectory and a female convent were built near the church, and the parish obtained a resident pastor for the first time. Since its earliest years, St. Joseph's Church has been served by the Society of the Precious Blood.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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