With support of loving community, Baltimore cemetery is revitalized

In recent decades, St. Vincent Cemetery in Baltimore was often synonymous with neglect, overgrowth and desecration. No more. 

The Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery (FOSVC) and others gathered June 14 for the blessing of the restored cemetery and new memorial gardens.

About 80 people showed up for the ceremony, according to Colleen McCahill, pastoral associate at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Baltimore. They were greeted with the green vibrancy of new vegetation planted in April.

“All the grass, trees and plantings were lush and green, making a lovely color backdrop to the whites and grays of the headstones and memorial grove beds,” she said.

“I was in awe!” added Stephanie Town, president of FOSVC and a woman whom many called the driving force behind the cemetery’s revival. “I felt like it was such an honor to be part of that group of people.”

Father Raymond Chase, outgoing pastor of St. Vincent de Paul church, said there was a range of emotions during the ceremony, including reverence for what they were doing and sadness for how the cemetery had fallen into disrepair in the 1960s and 1970s. But the dominant theme was upbeat. 

“There was pride in the people and work that brought us to this moment,” he said. “And joy at witnessing the children place ‘Forever Flowers’ at the headstones.”

The readings included Psalm 23 and a section of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, read by Town: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

The cemetery is the final resting place for more than 4,000 people from St. Vincent de Paul Parish as well as the parishes of St. Leo the Great and St. John the Evangelist, McCahill said. In addition, bodies from St. James Cemetery were moved to St Vincent Cemetery in the mid-19th century. 

Cleaning it up and creating the new memorial gardens was a long haul, according to Town, who had been raised as a member of Corpus Christi Parish in Bolton Hill as a child. The cemetery had suffered from vandalism as far back as the 1950s, with headstones broken and funerary monuments toppled. “It was a mess for everybody,” she said.

But God bless the Internet. With increased interest in genealogy and the advent of Ancestry.com, more and more people became interested in their forebears and consequently the cemetery. Town’s own story began with her mother’s death, which prompted her to delve into her own family tree. She met people through her cousin at the Maryland Historical Society. He put her in touch with others, and the whole enterprise grew. “It was like a chain email,” Town explained. “Someone set up a listserv, and the group grew to over 100 people.”

By 2010, people had become frustrated with the state of the cemetery, and in 2012 a group of descendants formed the FOSVC. The group relied on hundreds of volunteers to clean up the grounds, including students, Civic Works (a part of AmeriCorps) and Blue Water Baltimore, Town said. 

Town said they set up a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, which made donations tax deductible, and raised more than $30,000. The group also applied for grants, because it needed money for landscaping as well as for hand tools and water for volunteers.

Once the grounds were cleared, FOSVC could move ahead with landscaping and design. Enter Ray Heil, a landscape architect and member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish. He was able to come up with a plan that met the constraints of the land and the budget and incorporated use of the scattered headstone pieces.

“When he presented his design plan at a meeting, people cried,” Town said.

Most of the people buried at the cemetery were immigrants or first- or second-generation Americans. Irish, English and Italians are most represented in the interment records. “We are also aware of several African Americans interred there, including at least one who had been enslaved,” she said.

While Town grew up in Baltimore, she has lived in Pennsylvania since 1982. It was her father, who worked at Sparrows Point in the 1940s, who regularly attended the 2 a.m. Mass at St. Vincent’s. “It was called the printers’ Mass,” she said. “It was for shift workers.”

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