The first Catholic services in Danbury took place in 1845. Saint Peter’s Catholic Church was eventually built on Main Street in the 1870s. In the History of the Diocese of Hartford, published in 1900, Rev. James H. O’Donnell wrote
We have seen that at the time of the first Mass the number of Catholics in Danbury did not exceed 70. The present Catholic population is 6,000 souls, divided into 5,000 Irish and their descendants, and 1,000 of mixed nationalities, Germans, Italians, Hungarians, French, Poles and Slavs.
The Catholic population had grown to an extent that a second Catholic Church was needed. A new parish was established in 1905, followed by the erection of Saint Joseph Church, located at 8 Robinson Avenue, facing Main Street. The Romanesque Revival-style church was designed by Dwyer and McMahon of Hartford.
The parish’s first pastor was Rev. John D. Kennedy, who was also chaplain of the Emmett Club, named after the Irish nationalist Robert Emmett, who led an abortive rebellion against British rule and was executed in 1803. The Emmett Club was the local chapter of Clan na Gael, an Irish republican organization that supported the island’s independence from Britain.
