Visiting and Researching St. Mary's Church in Simsbury, Connecticut
St. Mary's Church sits on Main Street in Simsbury, right in the middle of the village green area that has been the spiritual and civic anchor of this town for nearly two centuries. The current structure is a Gothic Revival building that dates to the late 1800s, though the parish itself traces its founding back to 1839 when the first Catholic families arrived in the area to work the local mills and farms. Connecticut was not exactly a welcoming place for Catholics in the early nineteenth century, so getting the church established took some time and persistence on the part of the original founders. The architecture is fairly standard New England Gothic Revival. Pointed arch windows, a bell tower, stone and brick construction. Nothing flashy, which fits the town. The interior features exposed timber beams, wood pews, and stained glass windows that were added in phases over the decades. The most notable surviving element from the original build is the main nave structure, which has held up reasonably well through regular maintenance. If you are looking at the building for preservation purposes, the roof and the stonework around the foundation are the two areas that always need attention. Simsbury gets freeze-thaw cycles that hammer masonry every spring, and the roof lines on older church buildings tend to develop leaks at the valley joints where two slopes meet. I spent a few weekends last year helping a local historian document the interior plaster conditions, and we ran into a problem with the sacristy ceiling. Water damage from a clogged gutter had gone unnoticed for probably five or six years. The visible stain was about three feet across, but the actual compromised area was closer to six by eight feet once we removed the damaged plaster board. The workaround was straightforward but tedious: we tracked down the original contractor who had done work on the building in 1998, pulled the permit records from the Simsbury Building Department, and found the specifications for the original plaster mix. That let us source a compatible lime-based plaster instead of modern Portland cement, which would have trapped moisture and caused more damage over time. It saved maybe a week of repair time and kept the restoration historically accurate.
The archives at the church are not digitized, which is both a blessing and a frustration. If you want baptismal records, marriage certificates, or burial information, you have to go in person and request them from the parish secretary. The records go back to the 1840s, though some earlier documentation was lost during a fire in the original wooden church building around 1872. The surviving records from before that fire are mostly held at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford and the Diocesan archives in Hartford as well. If you are researching a family line that predates 1872, start at the state library before you waste a trip to Simsbury. One thing people miss when they look at St. Mary's is the organizational structure that keeps it running. The church is part of the Diocese of Hartford, which means it falls under Bishop Andrew Cozzens now. The parish itself is staffed by a pastor and usually one or two associate priests, with a lay staff that handles everything from the school to the food pantry to the facility maintenance. The parish council meets monthly and handles budget decisions. It is a fairly typical setup for a mid-sized urban Connecticut parish, and it works well until it does not. The main bottleneck is always the building itself. Heating costs for an old stone church in a Connecticut winter are not trivial, and roofing repairs on a structure of this age can run into the six figures if you are not planning ahead. The parish has a capital campaign fund, but it is never as full as you would hope when something major breaks. If you are visiting for Mass, the weekend schedule is Saturday evening at 5 PM and Sunday at 8 AM, 10 AM, and 12:15 PM. The 8 AM Mass is in English, the 10 AM is also English, and the 12:15 is typically the principal Sunday Mass with the full choir. Weekday Mass is Tuesday through Friday at 7 AM. There is Adoration on Thursdays from 6 to 7 PM. The church does not require a reservation or ticket of any kind, just show up and take a seat. If you are attending for a specific event like a wedding or funeral, contact the parish office at least two weeks in advance to reserve a time slot. The sanctuary can only accommodate so many people, and the wedding season from May through October fills up fast.
The parish school closed in 2019 due to declining enrollment and rising operational costs. This is not unique to St. Mary's. Many Catholic parishes in Connecticut have shut down their schools over the past decade. The building itself was sold and is now used as a community event space. Some people view this as a loss of tradition, but the financial reality is that running a K through 8 school in a town of Simsbury's size requires about 120 to 150 enrolled students to break even, and the numbers just did not work anymore. The parish still runs a religious education program for children preparing for First Communion and Confirmation, which meets once a week during the school year. The cemetery behind the church is active but has very limited space left. Burials still occur in existing family plots, and new plot purchases are restricted to parishioners who have been registered for at least five years. The older section of the cemetery has headstones dating back to the 1840s, and several of them are in poor condition due to the same freeze-thaw weathering that affects the building. If you are doing genealogical research and need to read an eroded stone, bring a flashlight and a soft brush. Sometimes the inscription is legible in low-angle light even when it is invisible straight on. Do not use water or cleaning solutions on the stones. It sounds obvious, but I have seen visitors try to wash algae off a granite marker with a garden hose, which just accelerates the deterioration. For those interested in the broader architectural history, the church was designed by a local architect working in the Gothic Revival style that was popular for Protestant churches at the time but adopted by Catholic builders as a way to signal permanence and legitimacy in a predominantly Protestant region. The pointed arches and vertical emphasis were deliberate choices. The stained glass was imported from Europe in the 1890s, primarily from Germany and France, which was common for well-funded parishes in that era. The later windows added in the mid-twentieth century were sourced from domestic manufacturers in New York and Pennsylvania.
Get the Full Details
If you want to access the building for a event or a filming permit, contact the parish office directly. They typically charge a facilities fee that scales with the size of the event and the duration. Small gatherings under twenty people might run a few hundred dollars, while a full wedding with reception space can cost a thousand or more. The fee includes use of the sanctuary, the adjacent hall, and basic sound equipment. Cleaning and security deposits are usually required as well. The parish maintains an active food pantry and several outreach programs that serve the broader Simsbury community regardless of religious affiliation. These are staffed primarily by volunteers, and the demand has increased noticeably over the past five years. If you are looking to volunteer, the parish office can connect you with the coordinator. No experience is required for most positions.
