Father Lawrence Palladino said the first Catholic mass at Livingston in the summer of 1883, on the cusp of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s arrival. The town was still a makeshift settlement of canvas tents and temporary dwellings. In 1884, Rev. J. B. Halton, Livingston’s first resident priest, set the cornerstone for this church on land donated by the Northern Pacific. Under Rev. A. Coopman, the simple, Gothic style brick church was finally completed in December 1890 and dedicated as St Mary’s on January 24, 1891. A new Catholic school (now the apartments diagonally across the street) was nearing completion when the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, arrived to teach in 1914. They set up temporary classrooms in St. Mary’s sanctuary. For two months, sixty-four students sat on the pew kneelers, using the pews as desks. St. Mary’s continued to serve Catholics until 1967. At that time, construction of a new church and school on F Street prompted the Catholics to sell St. Mary’s to the Congregationalists. It has since served as the Livingston Congregational Church.
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