Saint Peter Church
Covington, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana
Marker Inscription
Saint Peter Church. L'Abbé Jouanneault built the predecessor of St. Peter Church on the Bogue Falaya in 1843. The first resident pastor was Fr. J. X. Giraud, appointed in 1863 to serve Covington, Madisonville, Bedico and Abita Springs. In 1898 Fr. Joseph Koegerl pastor, who was also Canon of St. Louis Cathedral, built a new church and rectory on Massachusetts St. The Jefferson Ave. church was erected in 1940 during the pastorate of Fr. Aemilian Egler, O.S.B. Two Benedictine monks were pastors 1878-1885 and Benedictines have served the parish continuously since 1922.
Erected by Archdiocesan Bicentennial Commission
The Story
St. Peter parish traces its roots to a chapel the Abbé Jouanneault built on the Bogue Falaya in 1843, with Father J. X. Giraud becoming the first resident pastor in 1863 to serve a scattering of Louisiana communities. Over the following century the congregation raised new churches — a Massachusetts Street sanctuary in 1898 and the Jefferson Avenue church in 1940 — while Benedictine monks came to serve the parish, continuously so since 1922. The marker records the long life of a Catholic community founded by French and European clergy.
Why it matters
It reflects the deep French and Catholic heritage that shaped community life across south Louisiana.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The roots of this parish reach back to 1843, when a predecessor of the church was built on the Bogue Falaya. That places its founding in a Louisiana still deeply shaped by its French and Catholic heritage, in a landscape of rivers and small settlements where a church often stood at the center of community life.
In those early decades, Catholic communities across this part of Louisiana were served by a scattering of clergy covering wide territory. When the first resident pastor arrived in 1863, his charge stretched across several communities — a reminder of how thinly spread the church's ministers were, and how much ground a single priest was expected to cover.
The marker's timeline then carries the parish through the turn of the century and into the twentieth, an era of growth and consolidation, when maturing congregations replaced early structures with more permanent churches and settled into a more established rhythm of parish life.
People & events
The story unfolds through a succession of pastors, each tied to a building. The Abbé Jouanneault built the earliest church on the Bogue Falaya in 1843. Two decades later, in 1863, Father J. X. Giraud became the first resident pastor, appointed to serve not just this town but several surrounding communities — a working circuit of a ministry.
In 1898, Father Joseph Koegerl — who also held the distinction of being a Canon of St. Louis Cathedral — built a new church and rectory on Massachusetts Street. Then in 1940, during the pastorate of Father Aemilian Egler, a Benedictine, the church on Jefferson Avenue was erected, marking another chapter in the parish's physical life.
Running through this is the thread of the Benedictines. Two Benedictine monks served as pastors between 1878 and 1885, and from 1922 onward the Benedictines have served the parish continuously. That long monastic presence gives the community a distinctive character and a rare continuity, binding one generation of the parish to the next.
Its place in the American story
This parish is a window onto the deep French and Catholic heritage that shaped south Louisiana and made it unlike most of the rest of the country. While much of nineteenth-century America was Protestant in its dominant public culture, communities like this one were built around a Catholic faith carried and sustained by French and European clergy.
The names in the marker's history — a French abbé, priests serving multiple far-flung communities, and monks of the Benedictine order — reflect how immigrant and European religious traditions took root in American soil and became the enduring backbone of local life. The church was not just a place of worship but a center of identity and continuity.
The steady rebuilding across the decades — chapel, then one new church, then another — also mirrors a familiar American pattern: a congregation that grows, endures, and repeatedly renews its physical home, so that the buildings themselves become a record of a community's persistence over more than a century.
If you visit
Come to this church with its long timeline in mind, and it becomes far more than a single building. You're looking at the latest chapter of a story that began on a riverbank in the 1840s and has been carried forward, church by church and pastor by pastor, ever since.
Let the marker do its work as a kind of family tree. The dates and names trace how the parish moved and rebuilt over the generations, and knowing that history changes how the present church feels — less like a fixed structure, more like a living continuation.
If your travels take you through this part of Louisiana, a stop here pairs naturally with a wider appreciation of the region's French and Catholic character. Approach it quietly and respectfully as an active place of worship, and let it stand as a reminder of how enduring a small community's faith and institutions can be.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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