St. Joseph's Cemetery

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

  • Slide title

    Write your caption here
    Button

By Robert Miceli     


The first St. Joseph’s church in Chester was built on Middlesex Avenue in 1855 on property purchased in 1852 by Father John Lynch, newly appointed pastor of the Lower River Valley. Until about 1876, the church was served mainly by Father Lynch, who resided in Chester, then Guilford, and finally Branford. Father P. J. Creighton of Colchester assisted him from 1862-1866 until it became too great a hardship due to travel difficulties and failing health. 

 

    In 1873, during the time of Father Lynch’s leadership, land for a new cemetery adjacent to the church was purchased and blessed the same year by Hartford Bishop Francis McFarland. As the Catholic community was already almost 20 years old at the time of the cemetery’s establishment, a number of parishioners wished to have their deceased family members memorialized with monuments, although they had been interred elsewhere years earlier.


Those with memorial stones include:

Timothy Moynihan, 1858

Catherine Murphy, 1860

Mary Moynihan, 1861

James Slyme, 1869

Catherine Baker, 1870

The cemetery was added to and expanded several times over the years.


The same year the cemetery was purchased (1873), Chester area Catholics sent a request to Hartford Bishop McFarland to install a resident priest at St. Joseph’s Church. This request was ultimately granted in 1876, and Chester was established as a separate parish with Father Philip Sheriden appointed as its first pastor. The new parish included the towns of Clinton, Deep River, Essex, Haddam, Lyme, Old Saybrook, and Westbrook.