Irish Ridge Cemetery in Lewis County was part of what was once known as “Little Ireland”
The earth rests lightly over those who once made their home on the Irish Ridge in Lewis County.
Their little St. Patrick Mission Church between Lewistown and Monticello has been gone for over a century, but their names are still etched into weathered stones marking where they await resurrection on the Last Day.
“It’s a nice, peaceful place,” said Tony Cain, a member of Queen of Peace Parish in Ewing, whose grandmother is one of about 20 people buried in the Irish Ridge Cemetery.
His ancestors made their home nearby.
“My wife and I have our lots picked out,” Mr. Cain noted. “Our son and his wife have theirs, too.”
The most recent recorded burial in the cemetery was in 1962.
“Hopefully, it will stay that way for a while,” said Mr. Cain.
The Irish Ridge, a little enclave in the southwest quadrant of Lewis County in Northeastern Missouri, was once known as “Little Ireland.”
Almost all the settlers were Catholic.
“My Dad told me when the Irish started moving there — this was in the late 1800s —they decided to live up there because of the rolling hills and lots of rabbits and squirrels, rather than settling down in the rich farmland by the river,” Mr. Cain recalled.
“So, they lost a lot of opportunity by settling up there,” he said. “But I think everybody got along just fine.”
The St. Patrick mission at Irish Ridge was established while northeastern Missouri was still part of the St. Louis archdiocese. It was transferred to the former Diocese of St. Joseph in 1911 and became part of the newly created Diocese of Jefferson City in 1956.
The earliest mention of Irish Ridge in the Jefferson City diocese’s archives is from 1876, although the mission might have been established as early as 1870.
Dominican Sister Mary Bartholomew Little noted in her 1946 master’s thesis, “The Development of the Catholic Religion in Northeast Missouri,” that several small centers of Catholics had been formed by 1896 and were attended by priests from St. Joseph Parish in Canton.
These included the Lewis and Clark county missions of St. Peter in Alexandria, Immaculate Conception in LaGrange, St. Patrick in Lewistown, St. Patrick in Monticello (both probably referring to the Irish Ridge mission), Assumption in Wayland, and St. Paul in Williamstown.
Village green
Among the souls at rest at Irish Ridge are the grandmother and other relatives of Lewistown native Jim Finigan. He was a Major League All-Star third-baseman for the Athletics, beginning when they were still in Philadelphia, then during their time in Kansas City and later after they moved to Oakland.
“His main claim to fame was, he was the last Philly Athletic to hit above .300 before the team moved to Kansas City,” said Mr. Cain.
To Mr. Cain’s father, Mr. Finigan once recounted getting drilled in the head with a fastball, which permanently damaged his vision.
“He got out of playing and coached at Quincy College (now Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois) for a number of years,” Mr. Cain noted.
Other surnames inscribed in stone on the Irish Ridge include Glaves, Lavelle, McNally, Riley and Tooey.
Mr. Cain’s grandmother, Mollie A. (O’Donnell) Cain, was born in County Mayo in Ireland, as was her husband, Patrick, who went by “Patsy.”
The couple moved to a farm near the Irish Ridge and became regular Mass-goers at the old St. Patrick mission.
Homes on the Irish Ridge never had electricity or running water.
Mollie Cain died in 1902 while giving birth to Tony Cain’s father’s youngest brother. Her husband outlived her by many years and is now buried in Ewing.
“I wish I knew more about both of them than I do,” Mr. Cain lamented. “Young people miss out on listening to old people before they’re gone.”
Queen of Peace Parish in Ewing built a new church in 1919, around the time the Irish Ridge mission closed.
The former Irish Ridge parishioners offered the pews and other furnishings to the Ewing parish in exchange for taking care of the Irish Ridge cemetery in perpetuity.
Decades later, after the cemetery became overgrown and trampled by livestock, relatives met with Bishop Michael M. McAuliffe, second bishop of Jefferson City (+1969-97), to review the terms of the agreement.
With his encouragement, the brush was cleared, the headstones were straightened, a fence was built, and a sign was placed along the lane leading to the cemetery.
“It’s kept very nicely now,” said Mr. Cain.
God’s holy acre
A cold February day in 1988 brought relatives and descendants of the Irish Ridge settlers to the cemetery for a Mass and the blessing of graves.
Father Patrick Hoffmann, now deceased, who was pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Canton, presided.
“They came to recall their heritage and to pay their respects to ancestors buried there,” Monroe County journalist Juanita Yates reported for The Catholic Missourian.
“What had been an almost obliterated patch of ground, grown over by trees, weeds, briars and grass, has been cleaned and restored into a neat little rural cemetery,” Mrs. Yates, now deceased, wrote.
Harold Legg, whose mother and other relatives are at rest in the cemetery, had undertaken much of the work with help from Dr. J.R. Galbraith and Richard DeCoster of Canton.
“Celebrating together their Irish Catholic heritage, the people gave their afternoon to prayer and remembering,” Mrs. Yates reported.
Irish Ridge descendants are now looking for someone to repair and straighten some of the headstones.
For the Mass in 1988, a temporary altar was set where the sanctuary of the mission church once stood.
People told Mrs. Yates that early in the settlement’s history, members of a family that lived close-by died during an epidemic and were hastily buried.
Their final resting place eventually became the site of the church and cemetery.
Quiet green hills
Two oil paintings by renowned artist and Lewistown native Virginia Ann (Shoup) Terpening Baltzelle (1917-2007) have adorned a corridor in the Queen of Peace Parish Hall in Ewing since the mid-1980s.
One of the artworks depicts the old Irish Ridge mission church, the other the cemetery.
People at the 1988 Mass at Irish Ridge shared their remorse for their ancestors not having committed their memories to the historical record.
Mr. Cain, who attended that Mass, recently expressed similar regrets.
“I could kick myself for not finding out more about my Dad and his growing-up,” he said. “His mother died when he was 2 years old. His sister was a little older and ended up taking care of everybody. She never married.”
Her name was Anna “Bazie” Cain. She gave Mr. Cain his only photo of his grandmother.
Through marriage and inheritance, the farmstead once owned and worked by Mr. Cain’s ancestors became the property of distant relatives.
“They all passed away, and the property was sold at auction,” said Mr. Cain. “Big farmers bought everything, so there’s nobody living around there anymore.”
As for the consecrated summit with views reminiscent of the Emerald Isle in another century, “there’s still plenty of room,” Mr. Cain stated.
