A Catholic Church in Milford

(first published in the weekly bulletin of August 11, 2019)

Before the road to Medway would be finished by Dominic McDevitt and his Irish laborers and open to traffic in 1848, two events would impact the growth of Milford in a substantial way.  The first of these was the construction of the Milford branch of Boston and Worcester Railroad that opened in 1847.  Though just three hundredths shy of twelve miles, this branch connecting with the east-west railway in Framingham would also extend to Woonsocket connecting Milford to larger neighbors both north and south.  (This branch was known as the Milford Secondary and was abandoned in 1980; it is known today as the Upper Charles Bike Trail).  This expansion would bring new settlers to Milford to work in its expanding manufacturing who would settle in the area.

  Some of these settlers took the train from Boston through Framingham and settled in Milford would come to be known as refugees from the famine in Ireland.  Known as An Gorta Mor, the “Great Hunger” it would be the reason for the great diaspora of Irish people at the hands of the British.  While Ireland was a great source of the food that found its place on the tables of the aristocrats and wealthy of the British Empire, those who farmed the land subsisted mostly on the cheap and easy crop of potatoes.  However, in the late 1840s, a parasite attacked the potato plants and most of them rotted as they grew, leaving the Irish population starved.  The vegetables and grains they grew were exported throughout the Empire while the Irish struggled to survive.  As a result, many left the shores of Ireland in search of food; their favored destination was the United States and its closest port of Boston.

  Travelling in what later were called ‘coffin ships,’ many travelled sick and near death, and died en route. Others arrived malnourished, emaciated and beyond the ability to recover from the debilitating effects that the lack of food forced on their bodies.  Of these, literally thousands found their way from the port of Boston the railway to Milford, to begin a new life here beyond the death and devastating need of their native Ireland.  However, many also died within a short time of their arrival and they found their final resting place in Catholic cemetery which had been founded in 1840.  Their resting place lies to the south of Hamilton Avenue and the east of Cedar Street.  Long neglected and overgrown, a concerned committee of parishioners organized as the Friends of the Old Saint Mary’s Cemetery and over eight years met each Saturday from April to October to clear weeds, straighten and clean headstones and restore the dignity of those who lie there.  One of their great achievements was the An Gorta Mor memorial dedicated on Memorial Day in 2011 of Celtic Green granite as a testament to the untimely deaths of those who rest there.

This influx of Catholics meant that the local houses of prosperous Catholics were not large enough to host the monthly Masses that Fr. Matthew Gibson, and later Fr. John Boyce would celebrate, coming from Worcester.  These conscientious shepherds sought out the use of a large space in which to celebrate the Mass.  Leaders of the community arranged for them to use the Town Hall on Main Street.  In short order, some of the non-Catholic residents of the town objected to the use of public space for Popish worship and the services were transferred to the Lyceum for awhile.  In time, other leaders recognized the prejudicial bias of the move and had the town leaders restore the privilege to the Catholics to gather and have Mass once a month in the Town Hall.  In the meantime, Fr. Gibson, followed by Fr. Boyce, were steadily collecting funds to build a worthy house for their ever expanding and growing congregation within the town limits of Milford.

On June 1, 1848, a plot of land on East Main Street, known as the Wiswall farm, was purchased for the new church.  It was a small rise of land in what locals refer to as ‘the Plains.’  The first church, (shown above and built near the Churchill Street, perhaps the origin of the street’s name (?) is marked by a bronze marker in a stone wall today), was an unpretentious wooden structure.  It had a single tower which housed a bell (that was transferred to the school belfry) and was accessible by a wooden stairway from the main road.  Nonetheless, now the Catholics of Milford had a church to call their own.