After serving generations of parishioners, St. Peter of the Fields' historic church in Rootstown has been razed.
On the morning of July 2, Helmling Excavating of Kent began dismantling the old St. Peter of the Fields’ Catholic church building at 3487 Old Forge Rd. By the end of the day, the 158-year-old building was transformed into a pile of rubble and wood.
The building hadn’t been used for mass since 2006, when the parish had a new church building constructed adjacent to it. In 2024, St. Peter of the Fields merged with St. Joseph Catholic Church in Mogadore to establish the Saint John Neumann Parish. Regular services are still held at St. Peter of the Fields, as well as at St. Joseph. Father Kevin Bertleff is the administrator for the parish and presides over worship services at both churches.
Bertleff said the decision to have the church razed was due to the extensive cost of having the building restored, although several items were preserved and passed on to congregation members.
“I know there’s a rich history. The building means a lot to people and we’ve been trying to preserve that memory as best as we can, and so we’ve removed some of the stained glass and are preserving that in the current church hall. We’re going to be saving the bell from the bell tower, and we were able to do a little bit of an auction to allow family members to take pews out of the church, and so all of those have been distributed. The crucifix from the main church is currently installed in St. Peter Hall,” Bertleff said. “Everyone has been very pleased with that in terms of recognizing the grief that comes with parting with a building that has been around for that long, but also recognizing that the building isn’t built with mortar and bricks: the building of the church, that’s built of the people.”
The building had been in disrepair for many years due to flooding and water damage, and the congregation was in need of a larger house of worship, so a new church was erected and dedicated on the property in 2006. For a short time after 2006, the original church had been used for various events and celebrations, but was eventually condemned due to safety issues.
Alice Biltz has been attending what was St. Peter of the Fields church with her husband Gerald Biltz since 1975 and was present during the parish's transition to the new church.
“After we moved into the new church, we tried to use it [the original church] periodically. During Lent we would have services there, or during Advent; there were weddings. We had a historic committee and every fall we had some type of show. We had an art show where people brought their art things that were displayed in the historic church. We had people bring in their wedding gowns from their families and they were displayed. We had a quilt show one year, and we also had an antique roadshow; you could bring your antiques in and they talked about them and what they thought they would be worth,” Alice Biltz said. “Several different times, there were storms, electricity went out and water damage in the basement was the first thing. It just got to the point where we could not use the space anymore.”
Gerald Biltz grew up in the area and has attended St. Peter of the Fields church since his youth. He frequented his grandparents' 100-acre farm on Biltz Road in Rootstown, which he and Alice later purchased and still occupy.
He traces his roots back to Michael Biltz and his son George Biltz, who were two of the founding fathers of the church.
St. Peter Catholic Church, as it was originally called, was formed in 1866 by 18 German Catholic families who bought one acre of land for $100. The church was built in 1868 and served as a mission of St. Joseph Church in Randolph until 1898, when a rectory was built and the first pastor, Father John J. Boyle, arrived. The church was later renamed St. Peter of the Fields in 1941 by Father Robert Delmerge.
Shirley Riemenschneider, 92, has been attending St. Peter of the Fields church ever since she was baptized there in 1934, when she was three weeks old. Her father was Rudolph Biltz, the son of George Biltz.
She said the church installed custom stained glass windows that were brought from Germany around 1909 or 1910, and were partially paid for through the sales of garden seed packets by the congregation's youth. She remembers how the windows inside of the church made the interior seem larger than real life.
“When you walked into the entrance of the church, which would be the back of the church, and you looked towards the altar, as you went in, the ones [stained glass windows] you saw first were larger and they graduated smaller. There were three or four on each side, and they gradually got smaller towards the altar of the church, so that when you stood in the back of the church, it gave you the impression that the church was actually longer than it was, kind of an optical illusion,” Riemenschneider said.
The church was built using local timbers and sat on a stone foundation. Shortly after its construction, Boyle decided to have the men of the parish dig a basement below the church for an orchestra. It was a lengthy process that required the use of a slip scraper, a tool that resembles a shovel, pulled by a mule. The basement included a stage and an auditorium.
In the 1940s, during the holiday season, the church held turkey bingo in the basement to raise funds for the parish. A parishioner at the church raised turkeys, of which some were donated for the event.
“He’d bring the live turkeys in crates and they would put them in the stairway of the basement. It was a stone stairway and it was enclosed, and every time somebody would shout out bingo, the turkeys would gobble. Like a chorus, they would gobble, gobble, gobble, not knowing that was likely their fate for Thanksgiving day,” Riemenschneider said.
Riemenschneider remembers one year when the Duffy family won a turkey and took it home for their children to feed and attend to until it was scheduled to be slaughtered prior to Thanksgiving. When that day came, the children refused to let it become dinner, so it became the family’s pet instead.
As with many historic buildings, the former St. Peter of the Fields church had a character that can’t easily be replicated. The new church, however, features a variety of ecclesiastical artwork, a spacious interior and a multitude of windows that create a visual bridge to the outdoors.
“It is a shame that the church has to come down. I do regret it, as many do, but it served its purpose,” Riemenschneider said. “Those founding fathers, the early parishioners, it served them through the First World War, the Second World War, you know, hard times and good times. I loved the stained glass windows in the old church, but in the new church, you look out on that beautiful pastoral setting, and it’s quite calming and spiritual to look out and see the countryside. Hopefully, it will accommodate that parish for many, many years. It was a good thing to have that new church built when we did.”
Church clergy plan to have a memorial at the site where the original St. Peter of the Fields was located, but arrangements haven’t been made at this time.