For 120 years, St. Joseph Parish stood at the heart of Willisville, Illinois, a coal-mining community in southern Illinois. Founded in 1903 by immigrant families and closed in 2023, the parish became a gathering place where faith, family, and community life met.

John E. Miles traces this history from the earliest Masses in a schoolhouse through the construction of the church and school, the ministries of priests and religious sisters, and the generations of parishioners who sustained the congregation. Particular attention is given to Italian immigrant families whose labor, traditions, and religious devotion helped shape both the parish and the village.

Drawing on parish and sacramental records, diocesan archives, historic newspapers, genealogical research, oral histories, and family collections, the book explores the everyday life of a small Catholic community. Its story includes parish societies, cemetery traditions, celebrations, economic hardship, and the annual spaghetti supper that brought people together for more than six decades.

Extensively illustrated with historic photographs, newspaper clippings, documents, and other archival material, this volume preserves the people and places behind the parish's history. It also follows the difficult years surrounding the church's closure and the efforts to preserve its memory.

Written for former parishioners, their descendants, genealogists, and readers interested in southern Illinois, Catholic heritage, and Italian American history, this book records how one small parish helped generations of families make a home.

History of St. Joseph Parish in Willisville, Illinois

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