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The house, along with a 135 acre farm, was purchased by the Catholic Diocese of Hartford in 1921 with the intention of establishing a new parish in the Ashford area. The Diocese assigned Father William J. Dunn, Connecticut native and son of Irish Immigrants, to this daunting task. There were only about 100 Catholics around Ashford at the time and they were a multi-ethnic mix of Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, French-Canadians and Irish ... [ more ]

The small, but growing Catholic parish in Ashford decided to build a church for themselves in the early 1930s. Their energetic priest, Father William Dunn (son of Irish Immigrants), convinced summer resident Paul Chalfin to design the new building. Chalfin was not an architect, but he was an architectural designer whose best known building is the Villa Vizcaya in Miami, Florida, which is listed in National Register of Historic Places, He created a church with classical proportions and detail that is punctuated by a tower with an onion dome ... [ more ]

St. James' Roman Catholic church had its beginning here in the labors of Father McCabe, a Franciscan monk from Ireland, who was the pioneer priest of this county. Jesuit missionaries from Boston had visited this region occasionally, passing through perhaps two or three times a year, and saying mass in the towns on the way. The mission of Father McCabe extended beyond this county as far as Colchester. He began his work here in 1851 ... [ more ]

The first Irish Catholics, a group of only four men, arrived in Moosup in 1833. The first Mass was celebrate in a private home, but by 1859 there were enough Catholics in the area to fund the construction of the first All Hallows Church. All Hallows was named for All Hallows College in Dublin from which many of the early priests in the area had graduated. The first church on this site was replaced by the present building in 1901. The original steeple was destroyed in the hurricane of 1938 ... [ more ]

The John Flynn house is one of the oldest buildings within the Woodstock Hill Historic District entered into the National Register in 1999. Born in March, 1749/50, John Flynn was the grandson of Irish immigrants. He served as a Private and Trumpeter in Captain Samuel McClellan's Company from the town of Woodstock during the Revolutionary War. He was among the men who marched from Connecticut to aid Boston in the Lexington Alarm of April 1775. He also served in ... [ more ]