St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church

St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church

Uniontown, Washington

Jesuit Father Joseph Cataldo came to the Pacific Northwest in 1865 to spread Christianity among the Indians and to serve the religious needs of white settlers.  One of the stops on his perpetual round of missionary outposts in northern Idaho and eastern Washington was the homestead of the Tierney and Ruddy families on the rolling hills where the Uniontown township later was platted.

Surveying of roads and mail routes began in the Uniontown area in 1872 and other settlers arrived.  Thomas F. Montgomery, whose homestead included the original town site, provided the property for the first St. Boniface which became a mission outpost of Walla Walla, Washington.  In the summer of 1878, Uniontown Catholics constructed a primitive building to serve as the first St. Boniface Church.  It was finished in the spring of 1879 and the Rev. John B. Brondel said his first Mass and blessed it in the name of St. Boniface, the patron saint of Germany, homeland to a majority of the first Uniontown settlers.

A cramped, rustic church no longer suited the needs of Uniontown area Catholics and a new church was built at the corner of what is now Highway 195 and Church Street between 1880 and 1882.  It included a parish house.

An ell was added tot he second church in 1887 when St. Boniface had become the mother church of the expanding area, with it's own mission churches at Genesee, Idaho and Palouse, Washington.  In 1888 the Rev. Anton Joehren began developing plans for a permanent building, magnificent enough to satisfy the needs of a growing congregation.

A drive for funds bogged down in 1893 when the nation was battered by a financial panic and the Uniontown country had a legendary crop failure.  Plans for a new church weren't revived until 1902 and the money was either pledged or raised by 1904.

Uniontown brick and the architectural tastes of German Catholics were combined that year to construct the present St. Boniface.  Except for a few minor alterations, the church is the same as it was in 1904.

St. Francis of Assisi, St. Boniface, The Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Patrick and St. Anthony of Padua.