An inventory taken in 1974 indicates that there were 78 interments in the cemetery at that time, the oldest marked grave being that of Annie Theresa Sullivan, who died on December 6, 1880 at the young age of 23. As of 2017,
Find A Grave lists 331 interments. The cemetery is the churchyard cemetery of St. Mary's Mission Parish. A new church was built near the old chapel in 1954, remaining an active Roman Catholic Church.
At the western edge of the cemetery is a memorial in honour of Father Ravalli, consisting of a tall white obelisk surrounded by low wrought iron fencing. It is the only obelisk in the cemetery.
St. Mary’s Mission Cemetery
St. Mary’s Mission Cemetery (one contributing site)
The cemetery sits on approximately one and one-half acre. Post and wire fencing encloses the north and south sides; the western boundary merges with the Indian Burial Plot. Father Ravalli’s monument is the central focal point. The earliest marked grave, the white marble tombstone of Annie Theresa Sullivan, dates to 1880. The tombstone reads:
To the memory of Annie Theresa,
wife of John H. Sullivan, Dec. 6, 1880
In the 23 year of her Age
She was a dear loveing wife and kind mother.
May she rest in peace.
Many burials are not marked, and those that do have stones arranged in a random fashion, with most facing east. Later gravestones are of local granite in various colors of pink, gray and brown. There are several modern monuments including a granite cemetery stone labeled "Salish Kootenai" honoring tribal members whose homeland was the Bitterroot Valley, and a granite monument, “Tomb of the Unborn Child,” placed by the Knights of Columbus in 1991.
There are two types of early tombstones in the cemetery. One kind is the common flat, upright rectangle with curved, square, or shaped head. Annie Sullivan’s tombstone serves as an example. The second type is elaborately carved square columns capped with finials or urns. The Spooner family monuments serve as typical examples. The squared, upright gray marble column monuments of Theodore (1882), Mary B. (1886), and Rochele (1888) Spooner are each 3 to 5 feet in height and include elaborate, intricate carving. Large, urn-like finials cap the stones. These early stones of non-native white and gray marble reflect the era when grieving families could not obtain locally made tombstones and purchased them by catalogue.
From the NRHP Nomination Form
The story of St. Mary's Mission begins in 1823, when twelve Iroquois, employed as trappers by the Hudson's Bay Company, remained with the Salish through the winter of 1823-24. Exposed to Christianity 200 years previous, they told the Salish stories of Christianity and of the "Black Robes", the missionaries who taught them. The Salish proved to be an interested audience and, between 1831 and 1839 they sent four delegations to St. Louis in an attempt to obtain a Black Robe of their own.
On September 24, 1841, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, together with his fellow Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Gregory Mengarini and Nicolas Point, and three Lay Brothers arrived in the Bitterroot valley with their belongings and supplies in three carts and a wagon, the first vehicles to enter the area. They established the first white settlement in what was to become Montana, on the east bank of the Bitterroot river, immediately west of the present town of Stevensville.
The fathers built two chapels, residences and outbuildings, and began farming, planting wheat, oats, potatoes and garden crops. From Fort Vancouver they brought into Montana the first cattle, swine and poultry. A third chapel was under construction by 1846 but soon trouble with the Blackfeet forced the closure of the mission, the entirety being sold in November 1850 to John Owen, a former army sutler, for $250.00.
It was sixteen years later (1866) when Father Joseph Giorda, Superior for the Rocky Mountain area, called back Father Ravalli and Brother William Claessens and re-established St. Mary's Mission about a mile south of Fort Owen. Brother Claessens built a little chapel, the fourth he had built for St. Mary's, to which he attached a study, dining room, kitchen and a story and a half barn. Father Giorda made the "new" St. Mary's the Jesuit mission headquarters for the Rocky Mountain province. In 1879 an addition to the front of the building doubled the size of the chapel. (The entire Mission complex has been restored to that date - the peak of its beauty.)
The mission served the Salish people until their forced removal in 1891, during that time teaching them methods of farming and gardening to aid in their survival following the demise of the buffalo.
A Visitor's Center with gift shop, research library, art gallery and museum was built on the site in 1996.
Italicized sections above are from
St. Mary's Mission, Inc.