First stop for the group of 30-plus, who traveled by bus from Chicago, was St. Peter Church in Quincy. It was at St. Peter's original church that Tolton at age 16 received his first Communion from Father Peter McGirr, St. Peter's pastor. By the next summer Tolton was acting as an altar server at the church.
The second day of the Tolton pilgrimage, the group boarded the bus to cross the Mississippi, and traveled a short distance to the Elliott Farm, where Tolton's mother and her three children lived as slaves prior to their flight to freedom. At nearby Brush Creek, Mo., is another St. Peter's Church, much smaller than the St. Peter in Quincy, where the young Tolton was baptized in 1854. A pilgrimage Morning Prayer service was held at the Brush Creek Church.
Heading back east to Hannibal, the pilgrimage stopped on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River for a prayer service. Historical sources indicate the Tolton boys were about 7 and 8 years old, their baby sister had yet to turn 2, when their mother decided to flee with them in a rowboat on a dark moonless night, in an attempt to gain freedom. At the time, armed men patrolled the shoreline, firing their guns at random just above the water line, in hopes of wounding slaves who were trying to escape.
On Saturday the pilgrimage began with Morning Prayer, and then everyone sang Wade in the Water before crossing the river back to Quincy to attend a prayer service at Father Tolton's grave in St. Peter's Cemetery. Bishop Perry celebrated Saturday evening Mass at St. Peter's, for both the pilgrims and parishioners.
Closing prayer was offered on the bus heading back to Chicago on Sunday morning.
Pilgrimage prayer services and music selections were adapted from prayer services by Cheryl A. Cattledge for a Tolton Pilgrimage, offered April 30-May 2, for the Tolton Program at CTU.
No further pilgrimages are planned to the Tolton sites downstate or in Missouri, but in April the Tolton Program at CTU is planning a pilgrimage to the places where Father Tolton served in the Archdiocese of Chicago. To learn more about it, tag as a favorite, and periodically check back to see when details for the pilgrimage are publicized.
Back in Quincy, Father Bauer has taken several groups to the Tolton sites in Missouri. Tammy Cassady, a St. Peter parishioner, is in a senior group from Quincy who went on one of Father Bauer's guided tours. "He recently took a busload from my senior group on a tour of the sites. There were a lot of St. Peter parishioners who went on it, but a lot of other people too. Father Bauer is wonderful as a guide. He is a real fountain of information about the history of Father Tolton."