St. Mary's Catholic Church

St. Mary began in 1906 when Father Aloysius Heick founded the parish, and its first church stood on Holly Street, with an altar and vestments given by the Sisters of Mercy. Heick lodged with the priests of St. Paul until the parish took its Main Street lot that year; Katharine Drexel, later canonized, paid half the cost, and St. Paul's congregation raised $279.80. The present church was built in 1923. The congregation included Italian, Irish, German and Lebanese families, who stood by the nuns when their Black pupils drew hostility in segregated Vicksburg.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — 0.4 mi
  Vicksburg's Greek Revival courthouse of 1860, raised on a hilltop with the labor of enslaved artisans and now a private local-history museum heavy on Confederate relics.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 1.3 mi
  A 16-mile tour road through the trenches of the 47-day siege of 1863, with a national cemetery and the story of the thousands of enslaved people who reached freedom behind Union lines.
• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 1.6 mi
  The raised hull of a Union river ironclad sunk by a mine in the Yazoo in 1862, displayed at Vicksburg National Military Park with the artifacts the river mud preserved.

More markers nearby

• St. Mary's Catholic School — steps away
• Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister — steps away
• Jackson Street MB Church — steps away
• Newit Vick's Original Vicksburg — 0.3 mi