East St. Louis, St. Clair County, IL

St. Adalbert Church in East St. Louis, IL did not appear in any inventory of Polish parishes that I have found. Some Poles from St. Louis, MO, settled in East St. Louis and it seemed reasonable that they would go to a Polish church.

St. Adalbert sounded Polish and indeed, the individuals in the records were Polish! The parish was begun in 1904 by Rev. Julian Moczydlowski and the building was presumably at 7th & Pennsylvania Avenues. The parish was merged with another parish in the late 1960's and the church building was torn down in 1979. Baptismal records were only filmed to early 1907. The marriage records were filmed in two volumes up to 1932.

The first marriage volume had the ex loco phrase which loosely means, "Where did you come from?". Not unsurprisingly, their residence, East St. Louis, IL, was recorded. In a few instances where some additional location information like Galicia was mentioned, that was indexed as being more important than the more generic, East St. Louis. Volume 1 of marriages ends in the summer of 1909. Volume 2 begins with 1911. This gap raises questions for which I do not have the answer. If filled in completely, volume 2 would have been extremely useful genealogically. This volume asks specifically for the church, location, and date of baptism. Relatively few of the records included this information.