Saint Thomas Digital Archive

Public libraries and archives exist to preserve society's cultural artifacts and provide access to them.  Not too long ago, this consisted of preserving paper documents and photographs and accessibility meant one person visiting the repository where the source material was stored.  In some instances, fire or disaster would destroy the source material and a piece of history was lost to future generations.  In the case of Catholic parishes, much of the history might be stored in Rectory files or scattered among long-time parishioners.  Accessibility would be very limited - consisting perhaps of the Rectory staff for Parish documents and the family and friends of those parishioners that might have thought to save a document or possess a photograph of historical interest.  

At St. Thomas, we are using digital technology to preserve and protect Parish historical materials for future generations and to make them accessible to anyone with Internet access.  We hope you will enjoy the collection of materials presented here.  Where possible, the documents are presented in Adobe Systems popular PDF® file format.  To view or print these documents, you will need to have the Acrobat® Reader® software installed which is available for free download by clicking on the logo at the bottom of this page.

Documents that are too large for the PDF file format, are presented in ZIP file format.  To view these documents, you will have to have download the file and unzip it using the WinZip program.  A free evaluation copy of WinZip is available for download by clicking on the WinZip logo at the bottom of the page.  We apologize for the inconvenience of this method, but it is the only practical way to make these materials available due to bandwidth limitations and large file sizes that would take hours to download otherwise.

If you have St. Thomas Parish historical materials that would be of broad interest, please consider letting us scan them so that they can be enjoyed by all.  For details e-mail rectory@saintthomasnet.com 

Golden Anniversary Banquet Program
The program distributed at the St. Thomas Golden Anniversary Banquet in 1953.  PDF® file size 1.12 MB - opens in browser.

St. Thomas the Apostle School 1954 Capital Program
The brochure prepared for parishioners soliciting support for the building of the Parish School in 1954.  The historical perspective is very interesting particularly the architectural concept drawing of the plan for the original School.  When you click on the link, a dialog box will open asking if you want to open the file or save it.  Select save which will then download the 2.1 MB Zip file to the hard drive of your computer.  It can then be extracted with the WinZip program.