The French Catholics who landed on the Georgia coast in the early 1800s had found a land that was only a river’s crossing from the Spanish in Florida to the South, but without any Catholics. British law had forbidden the practice of the Catholic religion to fortify the English presence in the colonies. The busy center of the catholic coastal missions of the 1840s evolved, therefore, from these migrating French, who became the bedrock of the Catholic congregation in Saint Marys.

The small congregation, not yet an official parish, but nevertheless dedicated and with trustees, was deeded a large parcel of land on Dillingham Street by the city of Saint Marys in 1826, although it would be more than 130 years before a church would be built there. One trustee was James Vocelle, an Acadian (from Nova Scotia, Canada). His family and others met in their homes and stores, and were meeting upstairs over a grocery later in 1840s when another of the group, Marie Ponce DuFour, bought the little church for the Catholics. Later in the post-Civil War recovery, Our Lady Star of The Sea Parish was placed in the care of Marist missionaries from Saint Francis Xavier Parish in Brunswick and remained their mission for many years. According to Marist records, James Vocelle’s daughter, Hortense Vocelle, administered the affairs of the parish during the quiet postwar period and continued into the early 1900s. Mass at Saint Marys was celebrated once a month, for the most part, until 1953, when the mission priests began offering weekly Masses. Father John Mercer began the weekly schedule, followed by Father William Collins, Father Meiluta and Father William Kelly, among others. After a new church was built in 1958 on the Dillingham Street property, the parish was assigned its first resident priest, Father Stephen Mayer, who also administered Saint Francis of Assisi Mission, assumed the interim pastorate of the Saint Marys parish

Father William P. Dowling was named pastor to fill the vacancy left by Father Mayer’s death. During his pastorate, the parish built a social hall addition to the church, with classrooms and a rectory apartment, and added paved parking with sidewalks and landscaping. When Father Dowling retired in 1985, Father Francis Barry became pastor, followed by Father William Leahy in 1987. Since Father Leahy’s arrival, the parish has built a separate rectory and converted the pastor’s former apartment into CCD classrooms.

When the King’s Bay Base doubled the county’s population in the early 1980s, naturally the small congregation of Our Lady Star of the Sea also increased.

In 2001 Our Lady Star of the Sea got a new Pastor Fr. Gabriel Cummings, during his 12 years pastorate the new Religious Education Building was build as well as a New Church, that was dedicated on April 16, 2010.

Today, approximately 410 families are registered in the parish, and their members fill the church and CCD classrooms each week. The Knights of Columbus and The Ladies Auxiliary organizations serve the parish with sponsorship and college scholarship funding and many other acts of service. “Good Samaritan” Food Pantry distributes bags of food daily.

The original Chapel began as a bank in 1840; however, the bank failed after seven years. Mrs. Marie Ponce Dufour and her husband Lewis purchased the Chapel for their church, as they had no formal place of worship. A bell tower was added to the building and the Chapel was utilized until 1957 when a new, much larger church was built on Dillingham Street.