Collections | Places | Cemeteries
St. Joseph’s Cemetery (Catholic Cemetery)
12-26 Main Street, North Grosvenordale Unknown Acreage
GPS Latitude 41.98251 Longitude -71.89900
St. Joseph’s is the only cemetery in Thompson that is a graveyard, i.e., it is part and parcel of the Church property. This is a large cemetery; the specific acreage is not recorded in the Thompson Town records.
In 1872, The Reverend Eugen Vygen, Pastor of Putnam, purchased twelve (12) acres of land between the villages of Grosvenordale and North Grosvenordale. In 1874, the cemetery was consecrated. There are basically only two places that the Roman Catholic Church consecrates as Holy Ground; those are a church and a cemetery. The consecration of a cemetery is an extremely ancient custom of the Church. It can be traced back as far as Saint Gregory of Tours (before 593 AD).
Rules that control usage of this cemetery are dictated by the protocols of the Roman Catholic Church. At one time, only those baptized by the church could be buried there; one who committed suicide could not be buried; only persons of the Catholic faith were allowed burial; cremations were not allowed; all of these have changed over the years and are now allowed.
The cemetery has an outside altar which is used occasionally.
Many of the tombstones are more religious in design than those found in any other Thompson cemetery; there is a preponderance of a cross as one of the markings. This is one of the most ornate in this cemetery.
The first clergyman for St. Joseph’s Church was The Reverend Hyacinthe Martial whose tombstone is located near the church rather than in the graveyard.
Both the Hale Collection and the “Sons of Veterans Memorial Day List” identified some of the military burials in this cemetery through World War I.
These two records identify the following men who served in the Civil War.
- Anthony Collum: Co. C, 1st Massachusetts Artillery
- Robert Duprey: Co. C, 56th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers
- Hubert Moran: Co. B, 37th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers
- Phineas Young: Co. A, 17th Vermont Volunteers
- Peter Brunell: Co. H, 4th New Jersey Infantry
Per these aforementioned listings, the following veterans of World War I are interred here. It is interesting to note that each has engraved on his tombstone “World War” with nothing to indicate that this World War I; only history would show that there would be more than one “World War”.
- Charles E. Belair: Chief Quarter Master, USN
- Louis Bosquet: 56th Regiment, Battery D, CAC<
- Wilfred O. Duval: 47th Artillery, CAC
- Gustave Provost: Headquarters Co., 60th Field Artillery
According to Joseph Lindley’s Thompson, Connecticut Men and Women Who Served in the Armed Services (2019), the Town of Thompson had twenty (20) men who participated in the Spanish American War; the war only lasted from April 21 through August 13, 1898. One of these men is buried in this cemetery; Napoleon Girard served in Co. G, 3rd Connecticut Infantry and died in service from a tetanus infection.
Veterans from every subsequent United States conflict are buried in this cemetery. There is no compiled listing of these specific to this cemetery. Joseph Lindley’s book does record those Thompson residents who served through World War II but there are no references to their burial locations.
The Catholic Cemetery in the document section below may help in locating a tombstone; this is the original Hale’s List of Cemetery Inscriptions which records the gravestone locations as the person who collected the information walked through the cemetery.
Ida Ransom, July 2024
Documents:
St. Joseph’s Cemetery – Hale’s List of Cemetery Inscriptions