St. Paul’s Cemetery

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Overview

The land for St. Paul’s Cemetery in Hingham, MA was acquired by the primarily Irish congregation of St. Paul Parish in 1877. In 1898, the church acquired property from the closed rope walk. Then, a formal entry was created on Hersey Street with entrance pillars built by Irish immigrant John Moriarty who emigrated in 1875.

Irish Family Monuments at St. Paul’s Cemetery

You can visit Irish immigrant family monuments in the older portion of the cemetery which is in the left rear corner of the cemetery. One family that has a monument in the cemetery is the Crowe Family.

The Crowe family story follows a typical journey of the Irish immigrants who made Hingham their home.

John Crowe was born in the County of Tipperary in 1815 and arrived in Boston on the 7th of December 1847. A month later he came to Hingham where he worked as a molder, first making hollowware at the Hingham Malleable Iron Company on the Weir River. When that foundry was destroyed in a fire, John, still a foundryman in the 1880 census, most likely worked at the Howard Foundry, originally the Eagle Iron Foundry, just a short walk away at Hingham Harbor.

John’s wife Ann Sherry, born in the County of Monaghan in 1828, also arrived in 1847. By 1850 Ann was working for the Whiton family in Hingham as a servant. Ann was an example of a single Irish woman with little formal education who emigrated independently and found work cooking and cleaning. John and Ann married at a ceremony in Boston on August 1, 1852.