Venues

Dallas’ early Catholic settlers were the French and Belgian residents of the Utopian community called La Reunion. Part of the Galveston Diocese, they were ministered to by circuit riding priests based in Nacogdoches. The first mass was held in the home of carriage maker Maxime Guillot, whose grave in Calvary Cemetery is marked with a towering obelisk. His name survives on a short street one block west of Woodall Rodgers Freeway. “Old Calvary” Cemetery, established in 1878, largely hosts the stories of immigrants from France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, the European origins of settlers of that period. By 1926 the Dallas Diocese had established the much larger Calvary Hill Cemetery north of the current Love Field Airport, phasing out burials at Old Calvary. In fact, many families moved their loved ones to Calvary Hill where large family plots were available. Few burials have occurred at Old Calvary since 1945.