St. Anne Church

The "Mansion House" was the site of Island Masses until it was decided that a church should be built. Two sisters, Mrs. Thorton Brodhead and Mrs. John Wendell, granddaughters of William Macomb, arranged for the purchase of the first chapel, an abandoned schoolhouse located on the Thorofare Canal at Church Road. 

A site at East River and Church Road was donated in 1868 to the parishioners by Thomas Lewis. Parishioners, with teams of horses, moved the one-room wood building to the site where the rectory now stands on East River, during the winter of 1868-1869.

The small wooden church was dedicated to God under the title of Saint Anne on March 20, 1871 by Bishop Casper Borgess of Detroit. The chapel bell in the wooden tower summoned the worshippers to Sunday Mass for 46 years.

In 1895 a parish was established in Trenton and Father James Cahalan was named the pastor. Grosse Ile was a mission attached to that parish. Father Cahalan would say early Mass in Trenton and then come to Grosse Ile. To save Father the long walk along the railroad bridge, each Sunday parishioners would take turns propelling a hand cart on the railroad tracks across the bridge to carry the Priest back and forth over the river.

The wood church was intolerably hot in summer and very cold in winter. Therefore, the parishioners decided to replace the wooden frame church with a more permanent stone church.