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Photograph of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church
Photograph by Nyttend, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Cassella Catholic Church and Rectory

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.

From the record

“The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church is a Catholic church in Cassella, an unincorporated community in Mercer County, Ohio, United States. One of several Catholic churches in Marion Township, it was designated a historic site because of its well-preserved 19th-century architecture.”

Wikipedia article Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, CC BY-SA 4.0.

one of 28 National Register listings in Mercer County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

  • What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
  • Address. RT. 119, Cassella, 45860
  • When was it listed? 1979-07-26
  • Category. building
  • Also known as. Cross-Tipped Churches of Ohio TR
  • Township. Marion township
  • Architectural style. Gothic Revival
  • National Register reference number. 79002822 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

1,639 words

This property stands in Marion Township. History of Mercer County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, published 1907 gives that township a chapter of its own.

The chapter covers the township.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Marion Township - 1,639 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Specimens collected near this property

12 of 107 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 107 specimens collected within 10 miles of Cassella Catholic Church and Rectory between 1886 and 1975: 80 Animalia, 24 Fungi, 1 Unrecorded, 1 Bacteria, 1 Plantae. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by A. D. Selby, Brown, H P, C. Clark and others. Each is a physical object with a catalogue number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be concluded from a species being absent.

Image SpeciesYear Collected by Where, as recorded
Specimen of Procambarus blandingii (Harlan, 1830)Procambarus blandingii (Harlan, 1830)1920R. RhoadesSt. Marys Lake at Celina
Specimen of unnamed1934P. P. PironeColdwater
Specimen of Lestes rectangularis Say, 1840Lestes rectangularis Say, 18401942H. PriceGrand Lake
A photograph of the species Umbra limi, not of this specimenUmbra limi (Kirtland, 1840)1886Meek and HarrisMontezuma
A photograph of the species Podosphaera leucotricha, not of this specimenPodosphaera leucotricha (Ellis & Everh.) E.S.Salmon1906Selby A. D.Sharpsburg
A photograph of the species Colletotrichum cereale, not of this specimenColletotrichum cereale Manns1908Selby A. D.Sharpsburg
A photograph of the species Colletotrichum graminicola, not of this specimenColletotrichum graminicola (Ces.) G.W.Wilson1908Selby A. D.Sharpsburg
Glomerella graminicola D.J.Politis1908A. D. SelbySharpsburg.
A photograph of the species Ardetta minuta, not of this specimenArdetta minuta (Linnaeus)1909Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)Grand Reservoir St. Marys [Grand Lake St. Marys State Park], Ohio
A photograph of the species Ixobrychus minutus, not of this specimenIxobrychus minutus (Linnaeus, 1766)1909Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)Grand Reservoir St. Marys [Grand Lake St. Marys State Park], Ohio
A photograph of the species Telmatodytes palustris, not of this specimenTelmatodytes palustris (A.Wilson, 1810)1909Henninger, W. F. (Walther Frederick)Grand Reservoir St. Marys [Grand Lake St. Marys State Park], Ohio
A photograph of the species Didelphis virginiana, not of this specimenDidelphis virginiana virginiana Kerr, 17921911L. L. WaltersFt Recovery, 4 mi SE

All 107 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

From the nomination file

962 words on record

When this property was proposed for the National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is, and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain. It is reproduced in full on its own page, word for word and never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s typewriter's.

The whole case file for this property - 962 words, 7 pages, reproduced complete.

Quoted from the National Register nomination for reference 79002822, 7 pages, held by the National Archives in Record Group 79. See the catalogue record.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph PropertyDistance Listed
Gruenwald Convent0.5 miles1979
St. Francis Catholic Church and Rectory2.0 miles1979
St. Francis Catholic Church and Rectory2.0 miles1979
St. Aloysius Catholic Church2.3 miles1979
St. Sebastian Catholic Church and Rectory3.1 miles1979
Chickasaw School and Rectory3.6 miles1979

Sources for this property

National Archives recordThe nomination case file for reference 79002822 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia articleCommunity-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Mercer CountyAll 28 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

  • Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
  • Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
  • How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
  • Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.