Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Saint Joseph, KY

Saint Joseph is an unincorporated census-designated place in western Daviess County, Kentucky, centered on the junction of Kentucky Route 56 and Kentucky Route 500, about 12 miles west of Owensboro.

The 2020 census counted 110 residents in the Saint Joseph census-designated place.

The community grew up around St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, whose first log church was built in 1854 on five acres of land donated by John Rodman.

Father Ivo Schacht became the parish's first resident pastor in 1861; after the log church burned in 1868, a new church was built in 1870.

Two young Confederate soldiers from the area, Charles W. Thompson and Pierman Powell, who were executed while Union prisoners under General Stephen Burbridge's reprisal policy, are buried in the St. Alphonsus Cemetery beneath a single shared tombstone.

A post office opened at Saint Joseph in July 1886 inside Patrick Pike's general store, and Emma Pike became the community's first postmaster.

In 1874, five Ursuline sisters from Louisville traveled to neighboring Maple Mount at the request of St. Alphonsus pastor Father Paul Joseph Volk and founded Mount Saint Joseph Academy.

The Maple Mount campus became the motherhouse of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, whose grounds cover some 750 acres; the academy closed in 1983, and its buildings now house the Mount Saint Joseph Conference and Retreat Center.

A junior college the sisters opened at Mount Saint Joseph in 1925 moved to Owensboro in 1950 and developed into what is today Brescia University.

A new volunteer fire station was built in Saint Joseph in 1975, after a county water line reached the community in 1969.