The partially built church at Williamsville had been founded on land that had been donated to the Catholics on the condition that they would build a stone church, 115 feet long, thirty feet high, and twenty feet wide, a stipulation that was difficult to fulfill because the Catholics in the area were largely poor immigrants who were capable of giving little to the church. Mertz had been able to collect or borrow enough money, stone, and volunteer labor to erect four walls, but that was as far as construction had progressed. While Neumann said Mass for the first time in the roofless structure, some non-Catholics from the area threw stones into the church, one of which landed on the altar. Neumann completed this structure, inducing Wirtz to remit a loan he had made of $400 on the condition that a memorial Mass be said for him every year after his death.