Little has been written about the early history of St. Francis. It was notably settled by people of Acadian and French-Canadian descent. They supported themselves not only through agriculture but also through logging operations taking place upriver in the Allagash region.

St. Francis became a Catholic mission in 1871. It had its church registers from 1890 onward, and the mission was erected into a parish in 1894. The structure and exterior of the church was completed in 1902. According to a program for the dedication of a new church, the parish chose to tear down the early nineteenth-century structure in 1979 and it was demolished the next year.

Bishop Edward O'Leary dedicated the current church in 1981. It is now under the jurisdiction of St. John Vianney Parish with parish offices in Fort Kent. The inscription on the back is dated 1912. The card was printed in Germany for P. C. Clair of St. Francis.