HOW much do you know about St Dominic's Church at Hazelgrove?
St Dominic's Church at Hazelgrove, which is claimed to be one of the first Catholic churches over the Blue Mountains, was built in the grounds of the Hazelgrove cemetery and demolished in about 1926.
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The church was built in Sydney in the early 1800s. It was then moved to St Marys, then to Mount Victoria, then to Tarana, and finally to Hazelgrove.
Father O'Reilly sold it to Jack O'Connell for a barn.
A tin hall was built about 100 yards to the right of the cemetery to raise funds for a new church, which never happened, and the hall was eventually turned into a church.
The first burial, from the records, was Simon Carroll, who died March 8, 1857 and was buried on March 10, 1857 aged 50.
A newspaper article from the Lithgow Mercury, November 26, 1937, contributed by "Cornstalk", originally printed in the Western Times, states: "According to records before me, a man named Carroll was the first interred in this cemetery.
“My guide informed me that in his boyhood days he remembered a wooden memorial tablet bearing the inscription ‘Carroll’.”
Simon Carroll was a convict transported on the Governor Ready in 1829 who received his Certificate of Freedom on August 31, 1835 in the Bathurst district.
He did have land in the Hazelgrove area.
Another burial is that of Daniel Fitzpatrick, who died March 7, 1859 and was buried March 9, 1859 aged 53.
He was a convict transported on the Captain Cook and arrived on April 2, 1832 aged 26.
He was sentenced for 14 years transportation.
Mr Fitzpatrick was assigned to JW Lowe, Sidmouth Valley in April 1832. He was married in Dubin, Ireland to Margaret Kelly.
They had one son in Ireland and went on to have another nine children.
