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TEN miles from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi there is a world of bayous and creeks, of pine forests and tung orchards. Countless dirt roads, some of them little more than paths, wind through the woodlands, giving isolated homesteads a thread of contact with blacktopped highways.
Annunciation Parish is in this part of Hancock County. Its main church is at Kiln, a former lumber town now a crossroads with three stores and as many gas stations. On the following pages are portraits of Kiln’s priests and Sisters. Their activities give some idea of the life of the people they serve, descendents of French and Spanish settlers of the 1700’s.
Father Le Due, who was assigned to Bay St. Louis on November 17, 1859, and built the first Our Lady of the Gulf Church later destroyed in the 1907 fire.