Saint Mary's Irish Settlement Church

In the eighteen forties, Irish Catholic immigrants carved out a community in the hills of McKean County and called it the Irish Settlement. They organized a parish at Sartwell in eighteen forty-seven, built a log church the following year, and in eighteen seventy-one completed the permanent stone structure that still stands here.

Saint Mary's became the mother church for Roman Catholics across a wide swath of northwestern Pennsylvania. From this single rural parish grew the congregations at Port Alleghany, Bradford, Smethport, Eldred, Duke Center, and Costello, spreading faith and community infrastructure across two counties where roads were few and distances were great.

In time, as those daughter parishes grew stronger, Saint Mary's transitioned to a mission church served from Saint Raphael's in Eldred, a quiet reversal of the parent-child relationship it had anchored for generations. The building remains a testament to what a small immigrant community built by hand in the Pennsylvania hills.