In 1854, Matej (Matthias) Novak, his four children, and his brother Anton Novak moved to the area and settled along Mulberry Creek in the frontier community then known as Hottentot. Other Czech Catholic families also moved there, and by 1864 Father Victor Gury from Frelsburg periodically visited to attend to their spiritual needs, followed by Father Joseph J. Martiniere. After the Civil War, parishioners built a small stone chapel, sometimes called a hut, and another small cabin for visiting priests one-half mile east of the current site. Father Joseph Bittkowski delivered the first Mass at midnight on Christmas Eve 1865 and became the new parish's first resident priest. As Czech Catholic families continued to arrive in the Fayette County area, the little chapel became the first predominately Czech Catholic church in Texas and soon proved too small for the growing congregation. In 1866-67, a new wood structure was built closer to the town center, now renamed Praha. Thirty years later, in 1895, the current structure was erected of hand-cut, locally quarried stone, with much of the labor donated by parishioners. Swiss artist Gottfried Flury created painted frescoes on the vaulted wooden ceilings reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The parish's first Catholic school opened in 1896 in a two-story building administered by the Sisters of the Divine Providence and then the Sisters of the Incarnate Word. For more than 150 years, the parish and its church have stood as a source of hope, strength, and faith for the local community and as a physical symbol of the pride Czech immigrants and their descendants have in their religion, culture, and heritage.