Collegeport was founded in 1908 across Tres Palacios Bay from Palacios, which had been established in 1902, and three Collegeport families organized an Episcopal congregation there. Grace Theodora Smith collected donations from local residents and businesses to raise funds for land and a church building, securing nearly all the money needed before Bishop George Herbert Kinsolving contributed the last dollars. Smith envisioned a Mission style structure, and the congregation purchased lumber and concrete blocks to build it, completing it in August 1911, when the Rev. John Sloan of St. Mark's Episcopal Church of Bay City held the first service. In November that year, Bishop Kinsolving consecrated the church and named it Grace Church of St. Mary's Mission in honor of Smith and her work. Smith married Edgar G. Jones there in 1914. Adverse weather conditions, including a freeze, a tidal wave, and a hurricane, eventually drove many local residents from the area and away from the church, and the sanctuary fell into disuse by the early 1920s. In 1922, Bishop Clinton S. Quin established St. John's Episcopal Church in Palacios, which met for a time at the home of Sara Jane Pybus. In 1926, her son Fred Pybus and others, including J.E. Lothridge and George A. Harrison, moved the Grace Church building from Collegeport to Palacios. Bishop Quin consecrated it as St. John's Mission on March 20, 1927. Since then, St. John's congregation has refurbished the sanctuary, added a parish hall, maintained steady membership, and continued to gather for worship and education.