Beginning in the 1850s, Catholics in Williamston worshipped with visiting priests and often traveled ten miles by carriage or horseback on rutted, muddy roads to Saint Patrick Church in Woodhull, present-day Shaftsburg, to worship with Father Louis Van Den Driessche of Lansing. In 1866, brothers Jerome and James Waldo contracted with Detroit Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere to sell a plot of land in Williamston to the diocese for twenty-five cents, provided that a church worth at least one thousand dollars was built within three years. During the winter of 1868-69, Owen Brannan and Peter Zimmer cut and hauled timber to build the first of three Catholic churches on this site, and in 1869 a frame church costing eleven hundred dollars was erected here and named Saint Mary. A cemetery was founded in 1873, and Father John Lovett became the first resident pastor in 1879, when Saint Mary became a parish. From 1889 to 1898, despite growing membership, it lacked a full-time priest and became a mission. In 1895 the church burned, and a larger brick Neo-Gothic building was erected the same year. Under Father John J. Connolly, who served from 1898 to 1905, Saint Mary regained parish status and comprised the church, the cemetery, and a new rectory erected in 1902. A parish hall was built in 1948, a convent was established in 1956 for the Sisters of Saint Joseph who staffed the school that opened in 1959, and the present church was built in 1985. Descendants of Saint Mary's founding families continue to worship here.