Madonnaville, originally known as James Settlement or James Mills, began when Austin James moved there with his family in June 1804. For many years the James family was the only Catholic family in the area, traveling to St. Louis for paschal confession, though a Jesuit missionary said Mass there in 1817 and Father DuBourge, bishop of New Orleans, offered Mass there again in 1819 during his visitation of Catholics in the Mississippi Valley. On September 7, 1840, General Thomas James and his wife deeded forty acres to the Catholic Church for a church site, where a log church was built in 1844. By 1845, Father P. McCabe of Prairie Du Long attended James Mills and several other communities in Monroe County. In 1855, Father P.J. Baltes of Waterloo began the effort to build a stone church on the James site, and its cornerstone was laid on September 24 of the following year. After three years of construction, the church, measuring forty feet by seventy feet, was completed by stone mason George Andres and carpenter Adam Eichenseer at a cost of $4,038.25. Father P. Fisher continued monthly services, and in 1863 Adam Dehm donated a bell brought from St. Louis by steamboat to Harrisonville. A tower was added, and on the 8th of September, 1863, Bishop H. D. Juncher dedicated the church in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and also blessed the cemetery of St. Henry. A stone sacristy was added in 1909. The cemeteries near the church include St. Henry cemetery east of the church, originally the private burial ground of the James family, and another cemetery across the road laid out in 1892; the oldest standing tombstone is that of Mary Drury, who died May 3 1836, and older stones bear the names Adelsberger, Andres, Berger, Heidger, James, McDermott, Moskop, Schifferdecker, Shields, and Wierschem. In 1861 Father Louis Hinssen arrived from Edwardsville as the first resident pastor, began the first records, and opened a parish school in the old log church; a two story rectory was built in 1862 at a cost of about 2,000, and Father Hinssen was removed in 1865. Church records begun in 1861 include the first burial, John Berger, age 48, buried July 13, 1861, husband of Barbara Eschmann; the first baptism, Gertrude Weber, daughter of Jacob and Mary Elizabeth Weber, on March 30, 1861; 1,774 baptisms from 1861 to 2014, with the most in 1862; 404 marriages, with the first being Lames James and Elizabeth Nau on February 20, 1862, and the most in 1872; and 1,044 funerals from 1881 to 2014, with the most in 1867. In 1874 Father Bernard Ahne took charge of the congregation and oversaw construction of a two story school building costing about 5,500.00. The Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of Ruma taught and lived at the school, which employed teachers from 1902 to 1908, closed from 1923 to 1938, closed permanently in 1949, and continued in use for meetings, CCD classes, and special activities until 2014. Madonnaville also produced 32 sisters who were born there or entered the convent from there, along with Father P. Engel, Father Odillo Eichenseer, O.F.M., and Brothers Peter Eschmann and Adolph Eschmann.