Theres about 1000 graves here. One particular headstone reads, "Mother Caroline G. Hurrah 1891 - 1960". Taken from the website, "At the time it was decided to found St. Dennis' Parish, the priest responsible for attending to the spiritual needs of Catholics in the area was the Jesuit, Matthew T. Sanders, rector since 1852 of the Old Bohemia Mission base that was established in 1704 as St. Francis Xavier's at Warwick, Maryland.
While stationed at Old Bohemia, Father Sanders was responsible for the spiritual care of the Catholics in and around Chestertown, at Eastern Neck below Rock Hall at Willson's, and, in fact, for all of Kent County, Maryland. He was in charge of Elkton where Immaculate Conception Church had been founded in 1849. He also had a Mission at Smyrna in the state of Delaware, and other missions and house stations in such places as Middletown, Odessa and Dover.
Dennis McCauley was the lay founder of St. Dennis' Parish and the one person chiefly responsible for the erection of the original St. Dennis Church.
Dennis J. McCauley was born in County Donegal, Ireland, on May 14, 1814. Coming to America as a young man, he first settled at Philadelphia where he became a very successful business man.
On January 31, 1837, Dennis married Mary Gallagher in St. John's Church, on Thirteenth Street, Philadelphia. Also a native of Ireland, Mary was born at Letterkenney, May 12, 1812. Their union was blessed with five children, one of whom died at the age of three.
In 1854, at the age of forty, Dennis moved his family to Kent County, Maryland, where he bought a large farm at Lambson's Station, two miles from the town of Galena, which was then known as Georgetown Crossroads. His interest in this area is said to have stemmed from the trips he used to make to the Eastern Shore to buy hay for his horses; and, if he was in the flour business, also probably to buy grain to make the flour. Once settled in Maryland, he soon became very successful in his new life as a Kent County farmer.
Typically, Dennis McCauley had been settled at Lambson's Station only a short time when he obtained permission from Baltimore Archbishop Kenrick to build a church on the farm. Deeding an acre of his best land for this purpose to the Archbishop on September 17, 1855, and ready at any time to give more if needed, Dennis personally contributed a large part of the $3000 total cost of the 50 by 35 feet church, collected some funds from others, and made himself responsible for seeing that the church was paid for. Some time afterwards, a frame rectory was built next to the church, and the rest of the acre plot was reserved as a parish cemetery.
Regarded in his day as the lay theologian of Kent County, Dennis McCauley was ever conscious of the importance of regular religious instruction. Accordingly, he sent his two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, to study at St. Joseph's Academy, Emmitsburg, Maryland. It was Mary, incidentally, who made the beautiful needle-point picture of Christ's Agony in the Garden that still can be seen in almost perfect condition just above the inside entrance to the present St. Dennis Church.
The most outstanding of the McCauley children was Bernard Joseph, who was born in the year 1841. He was eleven years of age when the family moved to Lambson's Station from Philadelphia. From 1856 to 1860 he attended Mt. St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg. Three years later, at the age of twenty, he took charge of his father's farm, and thereafter he devoted his time to agricultural pursuits, eventually acquiring his own five hundred acre farm.
On January 7, 1864, Bernard married Elmina A. Woodall, of Georgetown, Maryland, a convert to Catholicism, at Nuptial High Mass in the church his father had provided at Lambson's Station, Father Villiger officiating. Bernard and Elmina had twelve children. The last of the twelve to survive, Teresa McCauley Scott, was buried from St. Dennis Church, June 13, 1966, at the age of eighty-seven. At the present time (this was written in 1970), among the many descendants of Bernard and Elmina living in St. Dennis Parish, there are five grandchildren-S. Richard and James E. Woodall, R. Thomas and Julian Cochran, and Genevieve Cochran Walsh, and a daughter-in-law, Mrs. S. Herman McCauley."
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