A parish cemetery on Meeting House Lane, with a published flag season and one rule that runs opposite to its neighbor in Hingham.
St. Mary's Cemetery is at 44 Meeting House Lane in Scituate, administered by Saint Mary of the Nativity parish rather than by the Town of Scituate. It is also referred to locally as New St. Mary's Cemetery, and both names point to the same grounds.
Because it is a parish cemetery, everything administrative runs through the parish office — lot purchases, arranging a burial, locating a plot, and questions about the rules. The Scituate Town Clerk does not hold these records. Families who search the town for a St. Mary's burial and find nothing are usually looking in the wrong office rather than looking at a burial that was never recorded.
Saint Mary of the Nativity was established as a parish on July 5, 1921, having operated as a mission for the previous 59 years. The first Catholic church in Scituate, the Church of the Nativity, was built in the summer of 1872, with the first Mass celebrated in its basement on Christmas Day that year.
That history matters for anyone searching here. The parish's own account notes that its cemetery grounds on Meeting House Lane sit at the original location where the first church was built, and that an additional cemetery was established later under Monsignor Quinlan — the pastor during whose tenure the present church on Kent Street was dedicated in 1937. The "New" in New St. Mary's appears to distinguish the later grounds from the earlier ones. If an ancestor was buried under this parish before roughly the 1930s, it is worth asking the parish office directly which ground holds the burial, since the distinction is not always reflected in online indexes.
One other note for searchers: when the parish was established in 1921 it initially took in Marshfield and Norwell, which only later became separate parishes. A family recorded in the Scituate parish's early registers may have lived in what is now a neighboring town.
The parish publishes its cemetery regulations. Summarized, as of September 2026:
Perennials are allowed here, which is not true everywhere. The regulations name annuals and perennials together as acceptable, so a low perennial base — sedum, dianthus, low daylilies — is a real option at St. Mary's. That is worth knowing, because the nearby High Street Cemetery in Hingham prohibits perennials outright. Two cemeteries eleven miles apart, opposite rules. This is the reason we check each one rather than working from a general policy.
No mulch and no stone. Standard advice for a grave-site planting is a light mulch to hold moisture and keep things tidy. That is not permitted here, and neither is decorative stone or any other bed covering. Plan for bare soil, which argues for close-planted, low-growing varieties that shade their own root zone.
Twelve inches, and no wider than the monument base. A small bed, on the same order as High Street's. Compact varieties only — nothing that spreads or flops.
The November 30 flag date is firm. A flag left up past it is removed by the cemetery, not left in place through winter. For a family arranging a Veterans Day flag from a distance, that is a narrow window between November 11 and the end of the month.
Our grave-site planting guide covers variety selection for these conditions in more detail.
Scituate sits directly on the coast, and salt carried inland is a real factor in how quickly stones green up — noticeably faster than at inland plots a few miles west. Why coastal headstones need more frequent cleaning covers what that means for scheduling; coastal plots generally want attention every 12 to 18 months rather than every two years.
A parish cemetery in continuous use since the late nineteenth century holds mostly granite and marble rather than the colonial slate you find at Scituate's older town burying grounds, though the approach differs by material — granite, marble, and slate covers that. We clean with D/2 Biological Solution over a minimum of three visits, with no pressure washing and nothing abrasive; why D/2 and not bleach explains the reasoning.
St. Mary's is unusual among the cemeteries we work in for publishing an explicit flag season — May 1 through November 30 — which covers both Memorial Day and Veterans Day in a single window. Flags not removed by the end of November are collected and turned over to the Veterans' Administration rather than discarded.
We place and retire flags at the veterans' plots we care for at no charge, and at St. Mary's that means working to the parish's dates. Our guide to flag placement covers the general etiquette and how practice varies from one town and cemetery to the next.
Start with Find a Grave and BillionGraves, then go to the parish office rather than the town — as a parish cemetery, St. Mary's holds its own interment records. Given the parish's two grounds on Meeting House Lane, ask specifically which one a burial is in if the date is early. How to find an ancestor's grave on the South Shore covers the wider search, including church records for the period before civil registration was consistent.
If you have narrowed a search to St. Mary's and cannot get to Scituate yourself, we can walk the grounds, locate the stone, and photograph it for a one-time fee of $15–$25.
The St. Mary's parish office handles plot purchases, burial arrangements, plot location, and general cemetery questions at 781-545-3335 ext. 214, and the cemetery page is at stmaryscituate.org/cemetery. We are not affiliated with the parish or the cemetery — we are a private care service that works in it.
Tell us roughly where the stone is — we work within the parish's rules and dates, and send photos after every visit.
Request a Service (707) 653-6539