Organized in 1855 to serve Irish Catholic immigrants, the parish of St. John the Baptist worshipped in a simple church on the Cowman farm until 1868. That year, the parish of seventy families built this church, which seated four hundred people and was the largest church in Ionia County at that time. St. John's grew to include a cemetery in 1884, a rectory in 1907, a school in 1917, a convent in 1927 that was razed in 1987, and a parish hall in 1977. Consecrated in 1884, St. John the Baptist Cemetery contains the graves of the Irish founders of the parish and their descendants. The oldest burials date from 1875 and were moved from the original Catholic cemetery, located one mile west of here. The Roach, Welch, Hogan, Cahalan, and Connell families donated the land for the cemetery. At the entrance, a shrine pays tribute to Father Eugene R. Fox, who served St. John's from 1938 to 1986.