Sisters of St. Joseph
In 1902 nine Sisters of St. Joseph from the mother-house at Le Puy took charge of the school in the French parish of St-Roch, Fall River, Massachusetts. The accession of other members from the mother-house enabled the community to take charge of three other schools in the city attached to French parishes. In 1906 St. Theresa's Convent was formally opened as the provincial house of the community, which was legally incorporated in the same year, and a novitiate was established. In the mid 1970s, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Fall River merged with the Springfield Congregation.
St Joseph's Church, Brighton
A Roman Catholic place of worship has existed at the bottom (west) end of Elm Grove since the late 1860s. Recent research has found that a temporary mission chapel, completed in 1869, stood on the site now occupied by St Joseph's. (Older sources suggested that the building completed in that year was the first part of the present church structure.) A local resident, Matthew Haddock, died in the 1870s; in his will he expressed a wish for a permanent church to be built to replace the mission chapel, and his wife donated £10,000 of bonds to fund this. Architect William Kedo Broder designed a tall stone building in accordance with Mrs Haddock's proposals, and the first part of the building—the sanctuary and part of the nave—was opened in May 1879. In 1880 the sanctuary was enlarged and the apse was built. Before any more of Kedo Broder's designs could be realised, he was killed in January 1881, falling from a moving train.