The settlement now known as Lancaster, gradually appeared.  First known as ‘Cayuga Creek,’ the first settlers came in 1803.  By 1808, merchants, grist and lumber mills were operating.  Ahaz Luce opened the first general store in 1810.  He is important in the parish history because he was the original owner of the land known now as  St. Mary’s hill.  New Englanders came to Lancaster first, with no Catholics among them.  Catholicism was not tolerated in New York State in colonial times.  As late as 1784, there was not a single Catholic congregation in New York State.

     In time, the immigrants came from Germany, principally from Alsace and Bavaria, in the 1820’s and 1830’s.  These were the first Catholics in Lancaster.  In 1834 their were 15 Catholic families in Lancaster.  They received care from Fr. Nicholas Mertz, founder of St. Louis Church in Buffalo.  These families walked eleven miles to church on Sundays.  Fr. Mertz realized that these families needed a closer, more permanent spiritual home.  Under his direction and with amazing foresight, these German families pooled their resources to purchase the land for the church.  The Germans envisioned their new settlement like those in their homelands.  So they chose hilly lands usually on the end of the village.  The purchase price for the hill was $80.  A dense forest covered the hill at this time.  Those pioneer names of our parish were, Ott, Meyer, Block, Uebelhoer, Fuchs, Gleiss, Zimmer, Wohl, Merge and Voegele.  On their shoulders we stand.

     St. John Neumann, a visiting priest to St. Mary's, came from Bohemia.  Neumann was instrumental in the building of the first church on the hill.  He celebrated Mass there once a month.  He also established the first school on Transit Road and Broadway.  The school was moved to the hill in 1842, with 30 pupils.

     The first school was a three room building with two rooms on the back for the priest residence.  The first resident priest at St. Mary’s was Fr. Noethen.  He celebrated daily mass in the small log church on the hill.  The first brick church was built in 1850 with local brick.

     Shortly there after a orphanage for boys was constructed here during a cholera plague that swept the country.  Three laywoman, all sisters, were in charge of about sixty boys.  It was called ‘St. John’s Protectory.’  It remained here for about twenty years and then moved to Lackawanna to become Fr. Baker’s.

  During those early years much work was to be done making the hill look like it does today.  The land west of the church was purchased.  The leveling the hills and filling the valleys was begun.  Records tell of the toil and labor of the parishioners to root up stumps, bring in topsoil and plant.  In 1874, a new school was build on the site of the old orphanage, because the old one was too crowded.  The school was staffed by the Miss Nardins until 1896, then staffed by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis.  Under the sisters guidance, the school grew to over one thousand students with nineteen sisters on staff.

In 1889, a new brick church was dedicated.  In 1903 a new large school building was constructed.  In 1908 the present rectory was finished.

In 1932 the church was enlarged and in 1936 new Austrian stained glass windows were installed.