The 22state to be admitted to the Union, December 14, 1819. In 1519 Mass was celebrated at Mobile Bay by missionaries accompanying the Pineda expedition. When Pierre le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, made a settlement at Old Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1699, he was accompanied by Father Paul du Ru, S.J., and by Father Anastase Doulty, a Recollect who had come from France with La Salle in 1684. They were joined by Father Antoine Davion, missionary to the Indians from the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Quebec, and when the settlement had been removed to Fort Louis, or Old Mobile, in Alabama, in 1702, the missionaries were assisted by another Jesuit, Father Pierre Dongé. In 1704 the parish church of Mobile was founded at Fort Louis with Father Henri Roulleaux de la Vente of the Foreign Missions, installed as first pastor by Father Davion. Fort Louis proving an unsuitable site, the colony was established at the present Mobile in 1711. The Catholic origin of place-names of the state is shown in the following:

Ecclesiastical divisions include,

See also,