SAINT JOHN PARISH, DARIEN, HISTORY

Dedication of St. John Mission Church: December 15, 1889

Founding of St. John Parish: May 1, 1895

Prior to 1888, Catholics of Noroton (Darien) worshipped at St. John the Evangelist Church in Stamford, the first Roman Catholic Church to be established in the Stamford area.

In the early 1880s, Hugh W. Collender constructed within his residence in Noroton on Collender's Point a small Catholic chapel, where members of his household and other communicants might attend Masses, said by visiting priests from Stamford. In 1888, permission was asked and granted to celebrate the Divine Mysteries at the Fitch Soldiers' Horne on Noroton Avenue, the first home built in the United States for disabled war veterans and soldiers' orphans (1864) and named for its founder and benefactor Benjamin Fitch.

Planning meetings followed and a committee, consisting of Rev. William H. Rogers of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Stamford, John D. Crimmins, and Hugh W. Collender, was appointed to establish a church in Noroton. A beautiful site of four acres on the Boston Post Road was purchased by Father Rogers from Francis S. Fitch, at a cost of $5,500; a house was also secured with the land.

Ground was broken on August 29, 1888, and the cornerstone of St. John's Mission Chapel was laid on Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1888 by the Rt. Rev. Lawrence S. McMahon, Bishop of the Hartford Diocese.

St. John's Mission Chapel was dedicated by Bishop McMahon, Father Rogers and assisting clergymen, before a large company of worshippers, on Sunday, December 15, 1889. The Rev. H. T. Walsh was celebrant. Rev. Jeremiah J. Curtin of Rockville preached an "eloquent and scholarly" sermon. A choir from Stamford, directed by J. F. O'Brien, with Miss Nellie McCallion, organist, sang the music of the Mass. The procession around the building was led by Rev. R. J. Carroll of Stamford, bearing the cross.

Bishop McMahon declared the building, though small in size (75 feet in length and 40 feet in width), to be unrivaled in Connecticut for beauty. The walls of the building were of rough-trimmed Greenwich bluestone, supporting wide gables that rose unbroken to the level of the belfry which was surmounted by the cross. Gothic windows lighted the altar and the choir loft.

Noroton remained under jurisdiction of Stamford until May 1, 1895, when Rev. Timothy M. O'Brien was appointed the first resident pastor.

Father Frank C. McGrath is the eighth Pastor of Saint John Parish in its 112-year history.