Father Caspar Rehrl, born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1809, came as a missionary to North America and arrived in the new diocese of Milwaukee in the Wisconsin Territory in 1845. Traveling on foot through the Wisconsin wilderness to Johnsburg, a small community of German settlers established in 1841, he became the first resident pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish. A priest, missionary, teacher, founder of churches and schools, and organizer of parishes, he carried out missionary work across eastern Wisconsin, organizing more than 15 parishes and schools, including Holy Name in Sheboygan, Holy Cross in Mount Calvary, and St. Joseph in Fond du Lac. Seeing the need for dedicated religious women to support education as Wisconsin parishes grew, he founded the Sisters of St. Agnes on August 12, 1858, an order of teaching and nursing sisters whose work spread from Wisconsin to Kansas and New York. He died on September 3, 1881, and is buried in St. Agnes Sisters Cemetery in Fond du Lac. St. John the Baptist Parish was established in 1841 by German settlers from the Rhine region, mostly from the areas of Trier and Koblenz. By 1842 the missionary Theodore Van Den Broek had arrived, services were held in the John Brost home, and he helped build the first log church in 1843 one and one-quarter miles north of the present site. By 1845 sixty families had settled there, and that same year Father Rehrl became the first resident pastor. As immigration increased, with land selling for $1.25 per acre for the best and $.75 for the inferior, and settlement spreading southward, the population grew to 200 families by 1851. The old log church no longer held the congregation, so in 1855 the community decided to build a larger church one and one-quarter miles south of the original church near the Manitowoc River on five acres donated by Mathias Kalt. In 1856 a new two-story school building was also erected, and on June 24, 1857, the patron feast day, the present church was completed and consecrated by the Rev. John Martin Henni, the first bishop of Milwaukee. A four-classroom school with living quarters for teaching nuns was built in 1923, two large classrooms and a meeting room were added in 1963, and in 1969 the parish consolidated its school system with three neighboring parishes. On Oct. 29, 1980, St. John the Baptist Church was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in Madison, Wis., as the oldest Catholic church north of Milwaukee with daily services.