Date & Time:
April 29, 2021
12:00pm – 1:00pm
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Forgotten Irish of Mount Auburn Catholic Cemetery
Join us for a presentation by cemetery historian Bill McEvoy, Jr. on the obscure Mount Auburn Catholic Cemetery in Watertown. Discover the stories of some of the 23,000 individuals buried there, the vast majority of whom were Irish, fleeing the Great Famine of the 1840s. Learn about what it was like to be an immigrant in 19th Century Boston – where they lived, how they died, and why they were buried in Watertown in a Catholic-only cemetery.
This project was the result of a four-year, 7,000+ hour, in-depth study of the 23,000+ people buried there. McEvoy has embarked on several ambitious research projects involving local cemeteries, such as Mount Auburn Cemetery and the cemetery at Rainsford Island in Boston Harbor. His book, Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery, East Watertown, MA., is available as a free download.
Bill McEvoy, Jr. is a US Army Veteran and retired Massachusetts District Court Magistrate. Since his retirement in 2009, McEvoy has conducted large-scale cemetery research projects, including several at Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery as well as a four-year study on the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery in Watertown. His most recent work uncovering the story of Rainsford Island, an off-shore hospital for Boston’s unwanted, led him to write about Alice North Towne Lincoln, who was instrumental in shutting down the island.
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