Saint Joseph's Catholic Church

In 1898, twenty Italian immigrant families settled on two hundred acres in Northwest Arkansas. A few years after their arrival, the town of Tontitown was established and the congregation of St. Joseph’s Catholic church was established under the leadership of Father Bandini. The congregation built a place of worship and a schoolhouse, and later established St. Joseph’s School. In 1934, a storm damaged the church beyond repair, and the congregation responded by building this structure with cement blocks. The building was completed in 1940 and served as a community anchor for members, including many families of Italian descent.

After seeing several attempts by Italian immigrants to establish farming communities in the Arkansas Delta fail, Father Pietro Bandini, a New York Italian consul, decided to lead a group of families to Northwest Arkansas where farming conditions were similar to those in their former homes in Italy. Father Bandini purchased 200 acres of government land that originally was homesteaded by Civil War veterans. Most of the land was untouched by the previous homesteaders, meaning that the immigrants needed to clear the land of timber before farming. The families arrived on the farm in the winter of 1898 and the only structure on the property was an old schoolhouse and a few log cabins built by the previous homesteaders. As many as two to three families stayed in each cabin and the rest stayed in the schoolhouse. In the spring, the families began clearing the land and planting crops. After that first year, the settlers constructed homes and a meetinghouse for their parish.

Like many immigrants, the Italian families were faced with persecution owing to their language and religion. Early in the congregation's history, a group of area settlers tried to destroy the newly constructed schoolhouse and church by setting a fire. Thanks to the efforts of these settlers, that effort failed and the schoolhouse suffered very little damage while the church only lost part of one wall. After the attempted burning, Father Bandini sent out an invitation to local communities to come to a meeting at the church. Bandini used this as an opportunity to lift the spirits of the settlers as well as warn the area men that they would not leave and were not cowed by violent threats.

The families struggled to find work in these early years. Several of the men traveled west in hopes of finding work as miners, but this only resulted in making widows out of their wives. Many orphans were preserved thanks to Father Bandini’s efforts during these years. Bandini had as many as ten orphans in his care at one point, some from losing parents from the disaster in the Delta and some from trying to survive in their new homeland. When not being used for religious services, the church was used as a school for orphans as well as other children and anyone else who wanted to learn English.

The farmers discovered that their land produced excellent grapes, and Father Bandini encouraged the cultivation of vineyards and also convinced the Welch Grape Juice company to start a factory in the nearby town of Springdale. Although Bandini passed away before the factory was completed, his efforts helped provide jobs in the area and Tontitown is the largest producer of grapes in the state.

Rothrock, Thomas. The Story of Tontitown, Arkansas. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 1Pg. 84 - Pg. 88. Published March 1st 1957. Arkansas Tech University .

Lewellen, Jeffrey. ""Sheep Amidst the Wolves": Father Bandini and the Colony at Tontitown, 1898-1917." The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 45, no. 1 (1986): 19-40. Accessed November 29, 2020. doi:10.2307/40025529.

Howard, Rebecca A. 2018. "Sons of columbus": War and assimilation in tontitown, arkansas. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 77, (4) (Winter): 355-380, https://libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=https://libcatalog.atu.edu:2084/docview/2311887449?accountid=8364 (accessed November 29, 2020).