The community and the Maria Stein Convent lie at the center of the area known as the Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches, where a missionary priest, Father Francis de Sales Brunner, established a number of parishes for German Catholics.

When the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railway expanded through Mercer County some decades later, its surveyors chose a path through the small community of Maria Stein, subsequently named "Station", to the west of St. Johns.

Father Francis de Sales Brunner, who established the Missionaries of the Precious Blood order that provides priests for St John's Church in Maria Stein, Ohio, entered the abbey in 1812 and remained there as a member of the convent until 1829.

[6] It is said of this painting that Brunner had it with him when crossing the English Channel in a sailing vessel and was miraculously saved from shipwreck in a bad storm.

[7] In this region, every small crossroads community has a substantial church, typically constructed by immigrant German craftsmen in the mid- to late nineteenth century and characterized by a steeple topped with a cross.

[10] A German dialect, traced by linguist Professor Wolfgang Fleischhauer of Ohio State University to northwest Germany (almost Dutch), is still spoken by many members of the community.

Maria Stein's cultural and religious history is remembered with a pilgrimage from St. John's Catholic Church, a quarter mile away, to the relic chapel grounds.