St. Mary History

The first Catholic Mass in the town of Wrentham was celebrated in January 1797 by Father Francis Matignon, the founding pastor of the Catholic Church in New England. Wrentham was one of the early mission centers south of the Holy Cross Church in Boston, and Fr. Matignon visited it regularly for the celebration of Mass and the administration of the sacraments.

The first sign of an established parish community in Wrentham was the establishment of the Parish of Saint Mary, Foxboro, with Wrentham as a mission of the Foxboro parish. The purchase of a building at 43 Taunton Street, Wrentham, by Father Michael X. Carroll, the pastor of Saint Mary Parish, Foxboro, provided the first Catholic worship space in Wrentham. A small building on the property previously used as a shoe and boot shop was remodeled into a chapel named in honor of Saint Mary. The Town Hall was utilized for the celebration of Masses when the resort at Lake Pearl brought large numbers of Catholic visitors to Wrentham for country vacations in the lakes region.

A major fund-raising effort for building a new church was initiated during the 1920's and the Church of Saint Mary was constructed on South Street in Wrentham Centre in 1928.  The stucco, California Mission-style church design was chosen because Saint Mary's had been a 'mission church' for so many years.

Father Dennis J. Maguire was appointed by Cardinal O'Connell as the first pastor of Saint Mary, Wrentham. Now separated from its mother church of Saint Mary, Foxboro, the new Wrentham parish was entrusted with the pastoral care of the Catholic community in the towns of Wrentham and Plainville.

The town of Wrentham experienced significant population growth following World War II, and Saint Mary Parish grew steadily as a result. The neighboring community of Plainville grew in population as well, and the mission Church of Saint Martha, Plainville was separated from Saint Mary in 1953 and established as an independent parish by Cardinal Cushing.

Saint Mary purchased the Richardson House on Minot Street during the 1960's as a site for religious education classes for the young people of the parish. The center was named in honor of Nora Kerrissey, the long-time housekeeper and sacristan of the parish. Nora's daughter, Josephine Hume, would succeed her mother for another half century of service to the parish as housekeeper and sacristan assisted by Nora's other daughter, Sister Ursula Marie Kerrissey, O.P. who journeyed from Watertown to Wrentham each weekend to assist as organist and sacristan. The Kerissey House served the religious education program until new facilities were built attached to the rectory.

The growth of the Catholic population in the ensuing decades necessitated an enlargement to the worship space of Saint Mary Church, and this expansion was completed in 1989. The first resident priest at Saint Mary rented a room at the old Brick Oven Inn which stood next to the church and, in 1943, the parish purchased the Inn for use as the rectory. The building served the parish until 2000 when the condition of the structure required the construction of a new rectory that was designed to closely follow the architectural lines of the orginial historic inn.

The Catholic community in Wrentham has grown over the years from the 25 families who worshiped orginally at the Saint Mary Mission on Taunton Street to the more than 1000 families who are registered parishioners of Saint Mary Parish, Wrentham, today.