The Museum of Newport Irish History will offer a free tour of St. Mary’s Cemetery on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 1 p.m., led by local researcher Steve Marino.
More than 1,000 Newporters are buried there, including many Irish immigrants and first-generation Irish Americans, according to the museum.
The cemetery served Rhode Island’s first Catholic parish, founded in 1828. As the congregation grew with immigration from Ireland, the parish built a larger church between 1848 and 1852 — the Gothic Revival stone church at Spring Street and Memorial Boulevard West, dedicated as the Church of the Holy Name of Mary, Our Lady of the Isle. It replaced a smaller wooden church, St. Joseph’s, on Barney and Mount Vernon streets, where the parish’s first cemetery was located.
St. Mary’s was established around the time the new church was finished. It ran out of room in the 1890s, when the parish began using St. Columba Cemetery in Middletown, and has been closed to new burials for many years.
The tour runs about 45 minutes. Participants should meet at the cemetery gate on Kingston Avenue near Warner Street, and are advised to wear flat, comfortable shoes, as the ground may be moist and uneven.
Reservations are requested. More information is available at newportirishhistory.org or from Ann Arnold at NewportIrishHistory@gmail.com or 917-270-3372.
