NATCHEZ — Come to Holy Family Catholic Church at 6 p.m. Thursday, to learn about the history of St. Catherine Street or to revive old memories. Better yet, organizers said, come and bring any images or objects associated with the history of St. Catherine Street to share with others.

Holy Family Catholic Church, the Natchez Museum of African American History, and the Historic Natchez Foundation will host the second public meeting to bring the community up to date on the St. Catherine Trails Project. The meeting will be in Holy Family’s cafeteria/auditorium, which fronts Orange Avenue and stands at the rear of the church building. Host organizations will serve refreshments.

The foundation will present a greatly expanded PowerPoint program containing new images of St. Catherine Street, which have been collected since the first public meeting on March 17 that introduced the project to the community. The St. Catherine Street Trails Project is phase 2 of the overall Natchez Trails Project and will extend along St. Catherine Street from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street to the site of the Forks of the Road slave markets. The project will include new sidewalks, landscaping and approximately 30 interpretive panels like those installed downtown and along the bluff.

Long a major transportation route into Natchez, businesses of all kind operated along St. Catherine Street, most reputable and a few disreputable, like the slave markets clustered just outside the city limits at the eastern end of the street. St. Catherine was also historically the city’s most ethnically diverse neighborhood with Natchez citizens of African, Irish, Italian, Jewish and even Danish descent operating businesses and living along the street.

African American contractor Emile Angelety operated a wood yard on the street and lived in one of the finest houses, while many working class blacks lived on the alleys that intersected St. Catherine Street. The Irish O’Ferrall family operated both a gin and a store. Members of the Italian Stallone family operated a plumbing business and a grocery store. The Jewish Zerkowsky family, who operated a store near the Forks of the Road, became wealthy landowners on both sides of the river. Axel Voss immigrated as a teenager from Copenhagen and founded A-B Motors on St. Catherine.

The Historic Natchez Foundation (601-442-2500) and the Natchez Museum of African American History (601-445-0728) are still gathering information and searching for images for interpretive panels.

The foundation promises to scan and return any photographs and is especially seeking pictures of people and families who lived and worked in the neighborhood, buildings that once stood on St. Catherine or its side streets and activities at Brumfield School and churches along the street.