Kerouac’s Franco-American Ghosts: A Self-Guided Walking Tour

With a history dating to 1894, Cimetière St. Joseph in Chelmsford, Mass., was founded by Father André-Marie Garin, OMI, in response to the needs of Lowell’s burgeoning Catholic Franco-American community. Born into this community in 1922, writer Jack Kerouac drew inspiration from his family, friends and neighbors—the heralded and unheralded, the headline makers and the humble—to create a vivid portrait of Lowell between the World Wars. More figures from Jack’s “Duluoz Legend” are laid to rest at St. Joseph than in any other cemetery in the world. This brochure provides a numbered list of the actual and fictionalized names of 25 Franco-Americans who appear in Kerouac’s Lowell novels. A brief biography of each is accompanied by a section and plot number in parentheses.

download brochure pdf