“St. Mary’s Cemetery” – Missoula’s Oldest ‘Active’ Cemetery
St. Mary’s Cemetery – Missoula’s oldest active cemetery
Fifty-Third Memorial Observance In Missoula Cemetery on Monday
By John Oberly.
This year will be marked by the fifty-third Memorial day on which Missoulians have visited the Missoula cemetery, which was surveyed by H. V. Wheeler in December, 1884. His plat was filed January 21, 1885.
It now contains between 7,000 and 9,000 graves, including plots of the Grand Army of the Republic, Masons, Eagles, Elks, Trades and Labor Council, the Jewish church, Scandinavian Brotherhood and Missoula county.
The land first belonged to a group incorporated as the Missoula Valley Improvement company. Its members were Judge Frank H. Woody, W. H. H. Dickinson, T. C. Marshall and Dr. Isidore Cohn. Dr. Cohn and Mrs. Dickinson sold their interests in 1901 to F. L. Worden and A. B. Hammond, and the company deeded the land to Missoula January 16, 1901. The property was formally accepted by a city ordinance March 4, 1901. The following trustees were appointed March 30; D. R. Beck, president; J. W. Lister, secretary; Mrs. L. Worden, B. A. Winstanley, Samuel Bellew and Mrs. Lizzie Mills.
In 1914, a 10-acre addition was made to the property, raising the acreage to 32, of which 22 acres are in grass. The cemetery is watered by its own system. It has been self-supporting, and has received no tax allotment since 1914.
The oldest dated headstone was erected in 1884, and the first person known to have been buried there was John R. Reynolds, whose stone is undated.
Many others, however, had been buried near here before then. Remnants of a venerable cemetery remain near the foot of Mount Jumbo, others are at the south end of Higgins avenue, and still more are a short distance west of the city.
The oldest cemetery still operative is St. Mary’s, which is believed to have been first used in 1863, when St. Michael’s mission, the first church for white men in Western Montana was erected at Hell Gate, five miles west of here. The mission was founded by Father Urban Grassi, S. J., and the building was erected by Brother William Claessens, directed by Father Joseph [Joset] Caruans, S. J. The building was abandoned in 1873, when the Sisters of Charity of Providence came here. By then the Catholic cemetery had already been consecrated.
Both Missoula and St. Mary’s cemeteries have become more attractive since the early days. WPA workers have recently aided in the construction of curbs and improvement of roads. Trees and lawns in both places have developed splendidly, lending to both a sylvan beauty which, before a background of far-off hills, can scarcely be equaled.
The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on May 30, 1937.
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