In 1880, Bishop Caspar Henry Borgess of the Detroit Diocese approved the establishment of a second Catholic parish in the city of Jackson, after St. John the Evangelist.

Building plans were delayed by World War I, but finally on Sunday, September 23, 1923, the cornerstone was laid.

In the fall of 2008, St. Mary Parish merged with St. Stanislaus Kostka Chapel in Jackson, which houses both the Polish community of the former St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish[2] and the Mexican community of Sacred Heart, formerly an independent chapel at a separate site in Jackson.

[1] All three towers are capped with copper sheeting, which is curved to meet at the top with a wood post that supports a 6' × 3' × 6' gold-leafed metal-clad cross.

The altars and communion rails were a donation by George Washington Hill, then president of the American Tobacco Company.

It is a World War I memorial to "all Jacksonians serving in the Armed Forces and to the nuns and nurses who cared for them on the battlefields."

To the left are other soldiers and a Sister of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul tending a fallen nurse.

The pipe organ, originally built by Frank Roosevelt in 1891 and relocated to the new church when it was completed, is electro-magnetic, and consists of 39 ranks and 3 consoles.

The inscription reads: In 1880 Bishop Casper Henry Borgess of the Detroit Diocese approved the establishment of a second Catholic parish in the city of Jackson.

The edifice also features stained-glass windows imported from Innsbruck, Austria, and Italian Carrara marble altars and communion rails.

The laying of the cornerstone for the school on June 30, 1889, was attended by a large crowd and presided over by Bishop John Foley, of Detroit, as reported by the Jackson Daily Citizen the following day.

When the school opened that October with 150 students, it was staffed primarily by the Sisters of Charity from Cincinnati, Ohio.

St. Mary continued to educate students through eighth grade until the opening of Jackson Catholic Middle School in 1971.

The 1946 team closed the season by beating rival St. John's High School 13-0 before a record crowd of over 10,000 at Withington Stadium.