My fascination started years ago on a high school exchange to Boston. I was strolling through Boston Common and the Granary Burying Ground where Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere and John Adams are buried along with “Mother Goose”. Mother Goose? What a surprise and not without controversy, and that’s what hooks me. Always more questions than answers with a good cemetery story.
There’s a family history of cemetery love. Ancestors of mine made monuments and gravestones in Quebec. One became a sculptor and made World War I memorials too. Two generations later, my mother began traipsing through cemeteries in Canada, the US, England, Scotland and Ireland and poring over town and church records long before the web made genealogy searches easier. I took a trip with her to Scotland in the 1990s. Copies of wills, ancient newspaper obits, and old letters mapped our route. We got our first hit in St. Cuthbert’s Burying Ground in downtown Edinburgh. A grave of a grandfather from way back. His epitaph read “Death is a debt to nature due that I have paid and so must you”. I never forgot the little verse and always thought it was his until I googled it today. Up popped several sites including a fascinating New York Times story on Sleepy Hollow Cemetery from 1894.
Titanic grave site at Fairview Cemetery in Halifax
Monument erected to the memory of an unknown child from the Titanic disaster
Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia is in every Halifax guidebook. The cemetery is one of three in the city that hold the graves of Titanic victims. Its Titanic gravesite has 121 graves lined in a curve on a knoll, like the bow of a boat. When we visited, stuffed animals and cards were scattered around the base of the Unknown Child and J. Dawson’s grave was covered with handwritten love letters. I wonder if Leonardo Di Caprio knows of the effect he’s had here or what the real J. Dawson buried here would think. He was Joseph Dawson from Dublin Ireland, a 23 year old coal trimmer. The Old Burying Ground in downtown Halifax dates to 1749. This is where British Major General Robert Ross was laid to rest. He and his troops burned Washington DC in the War of 1812. And you wondered how the White House became the White House?
The Old Burying Ground in Halifax
Lloydtown Pioneer Cemetery was our introduction to Lloydtown, Ontario and its prominent place in history. In the 1830s, rebels led by town founder, Jesse Lloyd and outspoken journalist/politician William Lyon MacKenzie met here and planned the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. Every Canadian school kid has heard of the rebellion but it’s hard to believe that today’s Lloydtown was once the #2 town behind Toronto in Upper Canada. The Rebellion failed but not before the rebels had planted the seed for democratic and responsible government in Canada. LLoyd fled to the US where he died in 1838 leaving a young wife and fourteen children behind. They’re buried in the little 1834 cemetery along with other early Lloydtown settlers.
Graves at the Crowfoot Cemetery
Crowfoot Cemetery sits high above the Bow River in the Badlands of southeastern Alberta. Below, a ridge of land stretches across the Bow underwater. For centuries, migrating herds of buffalo, horses and people crossed the river at this point. Blackfoot Crossing became historically significant over time and in 1877, Chief Crowfoot signed famous Treaty 7 here. The cemetery is the final resting place of Chief Crowfoot. Little crosses with the names Running Rabbit, Bad Boy Lepetre, Owl Child and Benedict Prairie Chick gave us a brief glimpse of Blackfoot life. Siksika Nation is part of the Blackfoot Confederacy which also includes the Piikani and Kainaiwa of southern Alberta and the Blackfeet of Montana. Down the road from the cemetery, Blackfoot Crossing opened in 2007. It is Canada’s largest aboriginal historic site dedicated to telling the story of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Walking among the graves at Crowfoot Cemetery
After a visit to the Sedalia Coop in the hamlet of Sedalia, Alberta (pop. 18), we were on a gravel road headed for Cereal when we came across this prairie pioneer home. A plaque on one side caught our eye and we stopped to read it:
The Gray Homestead in the Canadian Badlands of southeastern Alberta
Great stories and some beautiful photos! Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Elizabeth, your genealogy site is pretty cool too. http://www.littlebytesoflife.com/
Any way to figure out who Marion Edith Dahl (Gray) really was?
(last picture at end of post)
I would love to have a picture of her.
She might have actually lived in a sod hut when she first arrived.
That old homestead is just sitting out there on the open prairie with that plaque on it. No more information than that!
Glenn
Tried to find out who Marion was. Spent oodles of time researching genealogy sites and I tried nearest town ship office to no avail.
Great stories. I agree cemeteries are fascinating places. I put my love of them down to the fact I practically grew up in one. As a child I used to hop over our back garden wall and explore Tynemouth Cemetery in North-East England. It has bluebell woods and some beautiful old gravestones. I’ve just visited the Notre-Dame-Des-Neiges cemetery here in Montreal which is on the mountain. It was declared a National Historic Site by the Canadian Government in 1998 and is a wonderful location for a walk. I wonder if your ancestors made any of the gravestones there.
Bluebell woods and beautiful old gravestones conjure up a wonderful image. Thank you for your wonderful comments.
I can really relate to your article, Judy. I’ve been visiting cemeteries since I was a young girl as our family traveled across the U.S. and Canada on vacations. We would visit cemeteries for various reasons – historical significance, family background, beautiful location, or just out of curiosity. Like yours, my parents were always very interested in family history and I’ve inherited lots of files and photos, for which I am grateful!
I was fascinated with the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, too. It was quite a surprise to find Mother Goose there!
I’ll look forward to following your blog!
Thanks Cathy! I chuckled when I opened up travelingwithsweeney.com and found your great story. Must look the cemeteries up if I’m in their ‘hood. I would also love to visit Sleepy Hollow just to say I have! 🙂
We visited the Fairview Cemetery in Halifax this summer because my younger daughter wants to know everything there is to know about the Titanic. It was our first visit to a cemetery and we learned that cemeteries make for some great history lessons.
Thanks for sharing Lisa. Pretty poignant place to visit. Were there still flowers at the base of the unknown child’s grave and at J Dawson’s?
Thank you for sharing this post. My fascination with cemeteries has spanned decades. The history revealed can be fascinating. Sometimes tragic. The stones tell of pioneer hardship and epidemic disease. They define humanity and the trials and tribulations of life. I have been humbled so many times. Many years ago I visited difficult-to-access and very remote mining ghost towns in the American Southwest. The derelict buildings were often accompanied by the remnants of an old cemetery which revealed some of the story. Places like Hillcrest Cemetery help me realize I may not have as much to complain about as originally thought. Perhaps I have it easy.
Thanks for telling us about your fascination and about your cemetery finds in the American Southwest. Thinking you probably hiked in the region? Any posts and photos? Would love to read. Appreciate you dropping by.
I love that you love cemeteries and the stories they inspire. I’m also enchanted by cemeteries for that reason… they’re an endless treasure. But the ones I really love are in South America, the way the tombs define a personality with so much more than a headstone, the way that families visit on a regular basis to clean and chat. As a Canadian living there for several years, the ‘cemetery culture’ never ceased to amaze me and when I started to write fiction, cemeteries just crept in, no stopping them! They are fabulous.