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Photograph of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church
Photograph by Nyttend, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Maria Stein 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

“John the Baptist Catholic Church is a historic Roman Catholic church in Marion Township, Mercer County, Ohio, United States. Located in the unincorporated community of Maria Stein, it is the home of an active congregation and has been recognized as a historic site because of its well-preserved late nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival architecture.”

Wikipedia article St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Maria Stein, Ohio), 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 Wikipedia article

The listing

  • What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
  • Address. St. John's Rd. and OH 119, Maria Stein, 45860
  • When was it listed? 1979-07-26
  • Category. building
  • Also known as. Cross-Tipped Churches of Ohio TR
  • Township. Marion township
  • Architect. Q5243880
  • National Register reference number. 79002828 - 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

The chapter on Marion Township in History of Mercer County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, published 1907 names Maria Stein. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

A station on the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway, less than a half mile west from St. Johns. This town has a population of about 500 or 600 but is not an incorporated village. The most important manufacturing concern of this town is the New Spreader Company, manufacturers of manure spreaders, of which company Henry Synck is manager and Benjamin Oppenheim, secretary. The company has a very complete plant, including foundry, pattern shop, wood-working machinery, electric light plant, etc., and employs 25 men. John Link conducts the Maria Stein Machine Shop, where boilers and engines are repaired and wagons are manufactured and repaired. Other important industries of the town are the Davidson butter tub factory, the grain elevator of Henry Kramer, who also deals in hardware and groceries and the Moeller Lumber Company, Louis Moeller, manager, which company deals in lumber and building material. Henry Goecke conducts an undertaking business, manufactures brick and deals in furniture. Dr. Alois J. Willke is the town's physiciati. Located a short distance northeast of the town is the large convent of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood. A little over a mile west of Maria Stein is the settlement known as

Passage source: History of Mercer County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, published 1907.

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 71 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. Museums hold 71 specimens collected within 10 miles of Maria Stein Catholic Church and Rectory between 1886 and 1975: 66 Animalia, 4 Plantae, 1 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown. Collected by C. Clark, Clark, C. F. (Clarence F.), Clarke, Arthur H. 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 Carex grayi J.CareyCarex grayi J.Carey1903Wetzstein A.
Specimen of unnamed1934P. P. PironeColdwater
Specimen of Procambarus blandingii (Harlan, 1830)Procambarus blandingii (Harlan, 1830)1938C. ClarkEightmile Creek, Noble Township, S28
A photograph of the species Umbra limi, not of this specimenUmbra limi (Kirtland, 1840)1886Meek and HarrisMontezuma
A photograph of the species Carex granularis, not of this specimenCarex granularis Muhl. ex Willd.1901Wetzstein, A.Auf Wiesenboden in der Nahe des St. Marys Reservoir, 1 Meile westl. v. St. Marys
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 Chara schweinitzii, not of this specimenChara schweinitzii (A.Braun) Kütz., 18571920Collector unknownLake St. Mary, south of South Side
A photograph of the species Lepomis humilis, not of this specimenLepomis humilis (Girard, 1858)1927Trautman, M. B. (Milton Bernard)Grand Lake St Marys, Mercer Co, ~4.1 mi NE of Montezuma, Jefferson township
A photograph of the species Dendroica petechia, not of this specimenDendroica petechia aestiva (J.F.Gmelin, 1789)1928Homer F. PriceCelina, Grand Reservoir
Empidonax traillii (Audubon, 1828)1928Price, H. (Homer)Grand Reservoir St. Marys [Grand Lake St. Marys State Park], Ohio

All 71 specimens within 10 miles, at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Storms near this property

12 since 2006

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Maria Stein, the town this property stands in, in 12 storm reports between 2006 and 2023: 6 hail, 4 thunderstorm wind, 1 flash flood, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

WhenEvent Place namedHarm What the report says
March 2023Tornado (EF0)Maria Stein$30,000The tornado first touched down near Indian Trail Road and State Route 716. The tornado tracked east-northeast and crossed into Auglaize County near the intersection of State Route 364 and Minster Egypt Pike at 2348EST. The tornado continued northeast into Auglaize County before lifting near Bensman Road at 2353EST. Occasional tree and minor structural damage was noted along its path.
August 2021Thunderstorm WindMaria Stein$4,000Several large tree limbs were downed along with a few power lines along Huwer and Kremer Roads.
June 2006Thunderstorm WindMaria Stein$3,000Power poles were downed.
August 2019Thunderstorm WindMaria Stein$2,000Part of a tree was knocked down, along with several limbs from other trees.
July 2022Thunderstorm WindMaria Stein$1,000A tree was downed on Indian Trail Road.
April 2013Flash FloodMaria Stein$1,000Roads were flooded across the southern portions of the county due to heavy rainfall.
June 2008HailMaria Stein$1,000no account filed
June 2017HailMaria Stein-no account filed
July 2017HailMaria Stein-no account filed
June 2014HailMaria Stein-no account filed
July 2012HailMaria Stein-no account filed
May 2011HailMaria Stein-no account filed

Every storm recorded in Mercer County

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

1,214 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 - 1,214 words, 7 pages, reproduced complete.

Quoted from the National Register nomination for reference 79002828, 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.

Sources for this property

National Archives recordThe nomination case file for reference 79002828 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.
  • Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.