Most American river towns trace their immigrant stories to a port, a railhead, a factory gate. The Lebanese in Peoria, Illinois trace theirs to a single mountain village. Almost every Lebanese family in this central Illinois city descends from Aytou, a Maronite hamlet perched on the northern slopes of Mount Lebanon, and for more than a century they have kept its name alive in a banquet hall, a Sunday supper, and the smell of kibbeh drifting across the south side.
The Place
Peoria sits on the Illinois River where it widens into Peoria Lake, about 160 miles southwest of Chicago. It is the oldest European settlement in the state, established by French explorers in 1691, and for most of the twentieth century it was a manufacturing town built around one name above all others: Caterpillar.
The tractor company anchored Peoria’s economy and its identity for over a century, employing generations of workers before moving its world headquarters away in 2017. Today the city of roughly 110,000 people leans harder on healthcare, education, and technology than on the assembly line.
It is, in short, a working river city. And into that city, beginning in the 1880s, came a stream of immigrants from one specific corner of Lebanon who would build one of the oldest and most tightly knit Lebanese communities in the United States.
How It Became Lebanese
Three cousins and a mountain village
The story starts in Aytou, also spelled Aitou, a Maronite Catholic village in the Zgharta District of Lebanon’s North Governorate. It clings to the mountainside between roughly 900 and 1,300 metres above sea level, about 113 kilometres from Beirut and 27 from the port of Tripoli (Aitou on Wikipedia).
According to the Itoo Society’s own history, the first arrivals were three cousin-immigrants who reached Peoria between 1887 and 1889. They came, as so many from Mount Lebanon did in that era, under Ottoman rule, looking for work and a way to send money home.
What made Aytou unusual was the sheer concentration of its diaspora. Rather than scattering, families from the village followed one another to the same midwestern town, writing letters back that pulled cousins, brothers, and neighbours across the Atlantic to the same handful of streets.
From peddlers to proprietors
The early Lebanese arrivals in Peoria did what many Levantine immigrants across America did first: they peddled. Packs of dry goods, notions, and household wares carried door to door were a low-capital entry into American commerce that required no English and no factory job.
The river had drawn the first settlers, and in the early years the community clustered near it. But by the 1920s the Lebanese colony had moved roughly a mile inland to a twelve-square-block area around St. Patrick’s Catholic Church on Peoria’s south side. At its height that pocket held more than forty households of Aytou descent.
By then a vast majority of the immigrants had advanced from low-paying jobs to running their own businesses. They opened grocery stores, dry goods stores, restaurants, and taverns, the kind of small enterprises that turned a peddling community into a propertied one within a generation.
The founding of the Itoo Society
In July 1914, forty-six immigrants from Aytou formally organised what they called the Itoo Reform and Progress Society. The name anglicised their village; the mission was mutual aid.
The society existed to keep the Aytou community in Peoria united, to maintain ties with the families still in the village, and to provide for the welfare of both. When a member fell ill or a family in Lebanon needed help, the society was the safety net. It remains one of the oldest Lebanese organisations in the country.
The original Itoo Hall stood at the corner of McBean and McReynolds Streets. It was the centre of community life: weddings, funerals, fundraisers, and the meetings that held a scattered village together on a different continent.
The supper that paid the mortgage
In November 1928, about twenty women of the community decided to cook a meal and sell it to their Peoria neighbours, with the proceeds going toward the mortgage on that original hall. Among them were Mrs. Sadie George, Mrs. Budwea Peters, Mrs. Anna Joseph, and Mrs. Kemla Couri.
That meal became the Itoo Supper, and it never stopped. Nearly a century later it is still held every November, a buffet of cabbage rolls, chicken and rice, kibbeh, green beans, Lebanese salad, and pita bread that draws diners from across central Illinois.
A second wave, and a church of their own
A second wave of Lebanese came to Peoria from the 1960s through the 1980s, many of them fleeing the civil war that tore Lebanon apart in those decades. They reinforced a community that by then was already decades deep.
In 1973 that community built a new Itoo Banquet Hall at 4909 W. Farmington Road, a space holding roughly 500 people. The same period brought a spiritual home: Saint Sharbel Maronite Catholic Church, founded in 1973 and named for the nineteenth-century Lebanese hermit canonised in 1977. It gave Peoria’s Maronites a parish of their own rite, with the liturgy sung in Lebanese, Aramaic, and English.
The Landmarks
Itoo Banquet Hall, 4909 W. Farmington Road. Built in 1973 and holding around 500 people, this is the beating heart of Aytou’s Peoria diaspora. It hosts the November Itoo Supper and a June shish kebab dinner, events that together feed between 1,600 and 2,200 people and now raise money for charities including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Saint Sharbel Maronite Catholic Church, 2920 W. Scenic Drive. Founded in 1973 under the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles, this is the religious anchor of Peoria’s Maronite community. Mass is celebrated in Lebanese, Aramaic, and English, and the parish maintains a chapel dedicated to St. Rafqa.
The Feast of St. Sharbel. Each July the church hosts a feast that draws Maronites from far beyond Illinois. In 2016 roughly 1,700 visitors came from Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, the Middle East, and across the United States for candlelight processions, masses, and a hafli of musicians and dancers under a great white tent.
The original Itoo Hall site, McBean and McReynolds Streets. The first home of the Itoo Society stood at this south-side corner. It was here that the 1928 supper was cooked to pay off the mortgage, and the address marks where the community’s institutional life began.
St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, south side. The twelve-square-block pocket around this parish was the heart of Lebanese Peoria in the 1920s, holding more than forty Aytou households. Before St. Sharbel existed, Peoria’s Maronites worshipped within the wider Roman Catholic fold, and this neighbourhood was where the community physically took root.
St. Sharbel Village. Adjacent to the church, this set of parish facilities provides space for the overflow of pilgrims during the July feast, when the church itself and the parish hall fill and hundreds more need housing. It reflects how far the feast’s reputation has spread.
The Peoria RiverFront. The shoreline that first drew the community’s earliest arrivals is now a dining and entertainment district along the Illinois River. It is a reminder that the Lebanese story here began at the water before it climbed inland to the south side.
Where They Came From
Unlike most American diaspora communities, Peoria’s Lebanese have a single point of origin: the village of Aytou in the Zgharta District of North Lebanon. This is Maronite country, the heartland of the Eastern Catholic church that has shaped Lebanon’s Christian highlands for centuries.
The pull of one village toward one American town is striking. The village of Aytou itself counts only a few hundred year-round residents today, swelling in summer when emigrant families return. Yet roughly 6,000 to 6,500 people of Aytou descent now live in Peoria, with thousands more scattered across Venezuela, Brazil, Australia, and Europe.
That concentration is the engine of chain migration. The first three cousins of the late 1880s became the bridgehead, and for decades afterward each new arrival had family already waiting, a hall to gather in, and eventually a church that prayed in their language.
Peoria Today
The twelve-square-block colony around St. Patrick’s has long since dispersed. Like most second and third generation immigrant communities, the Lebanese of Peoria moved to the suburbs, intermarried, and spread across the metro area. You will not find a single Lebanese quarter to walk through anymore.
What survives instead is institutional and culinary. The Itoo Society endures, having recently expanded its board with six seats reserved for members under twenty-two, a deliberate effort to keep younger descendants engaged. Its original bylaws once required birth in Aytou, descent from the village, or marriage to a member, and that bloodline rule is part of why the community’s identity has stayed so distinct.
And the food still draws crowds. When the Itoo Supper fills the Farmington Road hall each November, or the Feast of St. Sharbel brings pilgrims to West Scenic Drive each July, a mountain village an ocean away is still, unmistakably, present in central Illinois. As one society member, Joe Couri, put it, Lebanese food is among the tastiest of any ethnicity, and in Peoria the people who grew up with it have spent more than a century making sure their neighbours could taste it too.
For other Lebanese-American stories shaped by the same Maronite roots, the community in Cedar Rapids, Iowa built the oldest standing mosque in America, while the larger settlements in Houston, Texas and San Diego, California took different shapes again. Closer to Washington, the Lebanese of Vienna, Virginia show how a later, more professional wave settled. And for another single-origin immigrant story rooted in central Illinois, the Swedes of Rockford followed a strikingly similar path.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where did the Lebanese in Peoria come from?
Almost all of the Lebanese in Peoria, Illinois descend from a single village: Aytou (also spelled Aitou) in the Zgharta District of North Lebanon. It is a Maronite Catholic mountain village, and the first cousins from there arrived in Peoria between 1887 and 1889, beginning a chain migration that brought thousands more.
What is the Itoo Society?
The Itoo Society was founded in July 1914 by 46 immigrants from Aytou as the Itoo Reform and Progress Society. It is one of the oldest Lebanese organisations in the United States, created to keep the Aytou community united, maintain ties with the home village, and provide mutual aid. It still operates from the Itoo Banquet Hall on Farmington Road.
What is the Itoo Supper?
The Itoo Supper is an annual November fundraiser begun in 1928, when about twenty women cooked a meal to help pay off the mortgage on the original Itoo Hall. Nearly a century on it still serves cabbage rolls, kibbeh, chicken and rice, Lebanese salad, and pita bread to large crowds each year.
Is there a Lebanese church in Peoria?
Yes. Saint Sharbel Maronite Catholic Church, founded in 1973 at 2920 W. Scenic Drive, serves the Lebanese in Peoria, Illinois. It belongs to the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles and celebrates Mass in Lebanese, Aramaic, and English. Its July Feast of St. Sharbel draws pilgrims from around the world.
How many Lebanese live in Peoria?
Estimates put the number of people of Aytou descent in Peoria at roughly 6,000 to 6,500, far more than the few hundred who live in the original village year-round. They are concentrated in the wider Peoria metro area rather than a single neighbourhood today.
What food is the Lebanese community in Peoria known for?
Kibbeh is the signature dish, alongside Lebanese cabbage rolls, shish kebab, chicken and rice, and pita bread. The Itoo Society’s November supper and June shish kebab dinner together feed between 1,600 and 2,200 people and are the most public expression of the community’s heritage.
If your family’s story passed through Peoria, or any of the places Lebanese have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a mountain village above Tripoli to a hall on Farmington Road, to wherever you are now.