During the 1830s, Irish Catholic settlers from New York State moved to Deerfield and Tyrone Townships to buy inexpensive land, but no parish yet served them. In 1843, Father Patrick O’Kelly of Green Oak, who served all of Livingston and Oakland Counties, organized a parish with thirteen families, and a wood frame church was soon built on the corner opposite here, where the oldest part of the cemetery is located. Originally a mission named Saints Peter and Paul, the church was renamed Saint Augustine Church in 1870. The cemetery’s earliest burial dates from 1846. Built of brick and hammered stone in the High Victorian Gothic style, the church was an elaborate one for a rural community. Many parishioners helped build it, including members of the Bennett, Conklin, McKeon, Murphy, Robb, Sweeney, and Lyons families, and Frank McKeon did the masonry work. When it was dedicated on December 8, 1895, the Fenton Republican called it “a monument to the untiring zeal and faithful labors of Reverend George Maurer, and every member of the society.” In 1963, church members used stone from a church being demolished in Lansing and from nearby farms to build the enclosed entrance vestibule.