The first Catholics to settle in
Wake Forest were George Bolus and his wife in 1910. Soon after, the Wilkinson family moved to the area from
New Orleans, becoming the second Catholic family in the town. Catholics, who soon after settled in the town, had to travel to
Raleigh to attend mass. As more Catholics settled in the area, a traveling priest John A. Beshel, the Chaplain of the
Nazareth Orphanage, occasionally celebrated mass in the living room of the home of the Bolus family, using a closet as a confessional. In 1938 St. Peter's Chapel, a
Railroad chapel car built by the Catholic Extension Society of Chicago in 1892, was given to the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh to use as a house of worship for Catholics in Wake Forest. The train car, which included a bedroom and kitchen for the priest, an altar, and sixty seats for congregants, was parked at the Seaboard Railroad by Bishop
Eugene J. McGuinness, and was used until February 1940. The new church cost $9 million to build. == References ==