The Cathedral Parish of St. Raymond Nonnatus 1917-1992
Written by Robert R. Morris

Part 3: St. Raymond's Community Roots
For centuries, the land that would become Joliet was the hunting grounds and farming plots of native Americans with wonderful names. The Pottowatomie, the Sauk, the Illiniwek, and the Kickapoo led their unrecorded lives, trapping along the Des Plaines River and farming in the fabulously rich, glacier-shoved black dirt of the Illinois prairie.

During the 1600's, trappers and explorers, priests and traders, characters all, came and went along the Mississippi Rivery Valley, the Ohio and the Great Lakes. Mostly French, they included Father Jacques Marquette and his associate Louis Jolliet, whose mission was to map and report on the area for the King of France.

In the fall of 1673, Marquette and Jolliet were returning following a voyage to find the best passage to the Mississippi. They paused at the spot where the city of Joliet would eventually rise. According to local historian Robert E. Sterling,

Standing on a high mound which would one day bear his name, Louis Jolliet shaded his eyes as he looked up and down the Des Plaines River Valley. From this vantage point Jolliet enjoyed a commanding view of the area, including the beautiful site off in the distance where more than 150 years later the city of Joliet would stand.

Indeed, 159 years later, in 1832, the U.S. government had "pacified" the area. Defeated in the "Black Hawk War," the Indians moved away and the lands were open to white settlers.

Charles Reed and his family were the first to arrive, and built a log cabin onthe west side of the Des Plaines River, at the present-day intersection of Jefferson and Bluff Street.

Shortly after, others arrived and laid claim to lands on the other side of the river, and by 1834, the locals were calling their community "Mount Juliet."

Those early days were difficult ones, with the fortunes of the residents cavorting on an economic roller-coaster of hardship and bounty. But in 1852, the community was incorporated as the city of Joliet, named after the French explorer who was so taken with the land in the late 1600's.

Joliet's location was to the founders' benefit, and the building of the legendary Illinois and Michigan Canal sparked development of the community as an industrial and transportation center.

Through the years of the Civil War, and into the 1870's and 1880's, Joliet became an American manufacturing marvel. Blast furnaces produced steel, and dozens of companies manufactured a dizzying array of items. According to historian Sterling,

...by 1890 Joliet companies manufactured windmills, bricks, bicycles, boots and shoes, chairs, harnesses and saddles, stoves, tile, doors, agricultural implements, beer, sode pop, wagons and carriages, paint, lime, cigars, engines, and clocks.

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