Reverend Jeremiah Ryan, St. Andrew’s first resident pastor, made practising Catholicism more accessible for Oakville residents in more ways than one. On top of allowing residents to attend mass more than only once each month, Reverend Jeremiah Ryan built Oakville’s first Catholic school, the first one between Toronto and Hamilton, St. Mary’s. The two-storey building constructed out of clapboard was completed in 1860, and it educated generations upon generations of families, even before being replaced with a brick building in 1930. Fr. Ryan also acquired a convent for sisters who taught at the school at the south east corner of King and Reynolds Street. After 1956, the rectory at the corner of Reynolds and William became a convent for the School Sisters of Notre Dame until it was reinvented again in the 1990s as a Parish Centre. St. Mary’s became Oakville’s first French school when it was renamed Ste. Marie in 1978. In 1983 the school was closed after over a century of service, and then demolished in 1987.

St. Mary’s cemetery on Lyons Lane is the pioneer cemetery that is associated with St. Andrew’s Church. The land was donated by George K. Chisholm in 1858. In the late 1800s, bodies from the cemetery beside the church and the old cemetery on Reynolds Street and were moved to the new location.