Old Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

Old Burying Ground

Nova Scotia

Details
Established 1749
Location Halifax, Nova Scotia
Country Canada
Coordinates 44°38′36″N 63°34′22″W / 44.6434°N 63.5728°W / 44.6434; -63.5728Coordinates: 44°38′36″N 63°34′22″W / 44.6434°N 63.5728°W / 44.6434; -63.5728
Type Closed
Owned by St. Paul's Church (Halifax)
Number of graves 12,000+
Official name Old Burying Ground National Historic Site of Canada
Designated 1991
Type Provincially Registered Property
Designated 1988

The Old Burying Ground (also known as St. Paul's Church Cemetery) is a historic cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is located at the intersection of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road in Downtown Halifax.

History

Old Burying Ground

The Old Burying Ground was founded in 1749, the same year as the settlement, as the town's first burial ground. It was originally non-denominational and for several decades was the only burial place for all Haligonians. (The burial ground was also used by St. Matthew's United Church (Halifax).) In 1793 it was turned over to the Anglican St. Paul's Church. The cemetery was closed in 1844 and the Camp Hill Cemetery established for subsequent burials. The site steadily declined until the 1980s when it was restored and refurbished by the Old Burying Ground Foundation, which now maintains the site and employ tour guides to interpret the site in the summer. Ongoing restoration of the rare 18th century grave markers continues.

Over the decades some 12,000 people were interred in the Old Burial Ground. Today there are only some 1,200 headstones, some having been lost and many others being buried with no headstone. Many notable residents are buried in the cemetery, including British Major General Robert Ross, who led the successful Washington Raid of 1814 and burned the White House before being killed in battle at Baltimore a few days later.

The most prominent structure is the Welsford-Parker Monument, a Triumphal arch standing at the entrance to the cemetery commemorating British victory in the Crimean War. This is the second oldest war monument in Canada and the only monument to the Crimean War in North America. The arch was built in 1860, 16 years after the cemetery had officially closed. The arch was built by George Lang and is named after two Haligonians, Major Augustus Frederick Welsford and Captain William Buck Carthew Augustus Parker. Both Nova Scotians died in the Battle of the Great Redan during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855). This monument was the last grave marker in the cemetery.

The Old Burying Ground was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1991.[1] It had earlier been designated a Provincially Registered Property in 1988 under Nova Scotia's Heritage Property Act.[2]

Prominent tombstones

  1. ^ Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 156, 212p.
  2. ^ pp. 223-224
  3. ^ p. 56
  4. ^ p.74
  5. ^ p. 296

Notable interments

Founding of Halifax (1749-1776)

  1. ^ Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society. Vol. 1, p. 44
  2. ^ The location of both Charles Morris and Richard Bulkeley are unknown. Both Charles Morris and Richard Bulkeley have wives buried in the burial ground but they are not. Given the stature of both men, if they had tombstones, they would have been prominent. They both have a hatchment in the church. Given that everyone else who has a hatchment is buried in the church, the assumption is made Morris and Bulkeley are buried in the church. While a display inside the St. Paul's Church (Halifax) states that Bulkeley is buried in the crypt, according to J. Philip McAleer, author of A pictorial history of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia, the evidence that Bulkeley was buried in the church is circumstantial. This circumstantial evidence rests on the fact that he helped establish the church and was an active member in it for 51 years. Also Bulkeley is reported to have had the largest funeral ceremony ever to be in Halifax up to that date. Further, his wife Mary Rous has a headstone in the St Paul's Church Cemetery, while Bulkeley does not. Rev Hill, however reports that Bulkeley's grave is marked by a rude stone in St. Paul's Church cemetery, presumably close to the gravestone of his wife Mary Rous. (See Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, Vol. 2, p. 69)

Siege of Louisbourg (1745)

Many of those who first established Halifax arrived from Cape Breton, which the British of New England occupied since their Siege of Louisbourg (1745). The following participated in the Siege:

American Revolution

Military figures

  1. ^ image of brother Stephen Hall Binney
  2. ^ http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/genealogy/binney/hibbert1.htm
  3. ^ Public Archives of Nova Scotia, RG 20A, Volume 2, No. 1784-24
  4. ^ Beck, J. Murray (1983). "Creighton, John". In Halpenny, Francess G. Dictionary of Canadian Biography. V (1801–1820) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 
  5. ^ Harvard
  6. ^ p. 625

Boston Loyalists

The following were Loyalist refugees who settled in Halifax after they were banished from New York and Massachusetts. Reflective of the fate of many of the Loyalists, the grave of Edward Winslow (scholar) is inscribed: "his fortune suffered shipwreck in the storm of civil war." Part of the devastation of the war resulted from American family members having to choose sides. For example, the story of one American patriot listed below, Benjamin Kent. While in Boston he imprisoned his son-in-law Sampson Salter Blowers for being a Loyalist. Blowers and the rest of Kent's family (including his wife) escaped to Halifax (1776). After the war, Kent eventually moved to Halifax to be with his family, which included Chief Justice Blowers (1885). Both Blowers and Kent are buried in the Old Burying Ground.

  1. ^ p. 174
  2. ^ William Brattle Biography. New England Life in the Eighteenth Century: Representative Biographies from ... By Clifford Kenyon Shipton. Harvard University Press. 1963. pp. 198-212
  3. ^ silversmith
  4. ^ Find A Grave - William Brattle
  5. ^ Find a grave image
  6. ^ James Murray (1713-1781) Letters of James Murray, Loyalist. There is also a Jacob Murray buried 1781.
  7. ^ http://66.43.22.135/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSsr=81&GSmcid=48857516&GRid=162269018&df=90&
  8. ^ Dictionary of North Carolina Biography
  9. ^ p. 711
  10. ^ Find a grave image
  11. ^ Father of Edward Winslow (loyalist) who was one of the founders of New Brunswick; his former home now belongs to the Mayflower House Museum
  12. ^ Winslow's tombstone is inscribed in part "his fortune suffered shipwreck in the storm of civil war", the "civil war" being the American Revolution, American Patriots fighting American Loyalists.
  13. ^ p. 786
  14. ^ https://archive.org/stream/winslowmemorialf0001holt#page/58/mode/2up/search/nova+scotia
  15. ^ https://archive.org/stream/winslowmemorialf0001holt#page/58/mode/2up/search/nova+scotia
  16. ^ https://archive.org/stream/collectionsmass35socigoog#page/n190/mode/2up/search/edward
  17. ^ There were four judges of the Superior Court in Massachusetts at the time of the revolution. Foster Sr. was among the four judges who were Loyalists. See American Loyalists, p. 491
  18. ^ Legal Papers of John Adams, Volume 1 By John Adams, p. cii
  19. ^ Thomas letter to Foster
  20. ^ house image
  21. ^ American Loyalist, p. 376
  22. ^ grandchild of Mass. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson (governor); son Hon Foster Hutchinson Sr. d. 1799; decedent of Anne Hutchinson
  23. ^ Gentleman's Magazine
  24. ^ p.177
  25. ^ Another Grandchild of NS Gov. Paul Mascarene was William Handfield Snelling
  26. ^ p. 27
  27. ^ Jack C. Whytock. The Huntingdonian Missionaries to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, c. 1785-1792
  28. ^ Jack C. Whytock. Historical Papers 2003: Canadian Society of Church History. Edited by Bruce L. Guenther, p.154.
  29. ^ http://66.43.22.135/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSob=n&GSsr=41&GScid=2203785&GRid=163057397&
  30. ^ Canadian Biography
  31. ^ Canadian Biography
  32. ^ Cite error: The named reference uelac_halifax was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

New York Loyalists

  1. ^ Loyalists in the Old Burying Ground
  2. ^ Canadian Biography Also see Hartshorne's portrait by Robert Field (painter)
  3. ^ Find a Grave

French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802)

During the French Revolutionary Wars, Prince Edward was stationed in Halifax and personally commemorated three military personnel who died while on duty in Halifax.

Prince Edward Comemorations

Prince Edward

Other

  1. ^ https://archive.org/stream/cihm_16766#page/n197/mode/2up/search/catto

Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815)

  1. ^ Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 156, 212p.
  2. ^ pp. 223-224
  3. ^ p. 56
  4. ^ p.74
  5. ^ p. 296

War of 1812

  1. ^ https://archive.org/stream/navalchroniclefounse_1#page/512/mode/1up
  2. ^ Graveside Project - Richard Smith
  3. ^ Chronicle Herald
  4. ^ The 104th (New Brunswick) Regiment of Foot in the War of 1812 John R. Grodzinski
Privateers

Military Officers (1816-1844)

  1. ^ Image

Other

  1. ^ Annals. North British Society
  2. ^ Cochran-Inglis family of Halifax by Eaton, Arthur Wentworth Hamilton, 1899.
  3. ^ Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada
  4. ^ Gentleman's Magazine
  5. ^ True Stories from Nova Scotia's Past By Dianne Marshall
  6. ^ Harris. The Church of St. Paul in Halifax, p. 230
  7. ^ Image and Bio of Bowie. Annals, North British Society
  8. ^ History of the County of Lunenburg By Mather Byles DesBrisay, p. 86
  9. ^ Note both children are also named on their father's grave stone in Camp Hill Cemetery.

Depictions in Media

In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of the Island, Anne moves to Kingsport (Halifax, Nova Scotia) on the mainland and enrols at Redmond (Dalhousie University).[46] She takes lodgings in an apartment that looks out over "Old St. John's Cemetery" - the Old Burying Ground:

They went in by the entrance gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch surmounted by the great lion of England.... They found themselves in a dim, cool, green place where winds were fond of purring. Up and down the long grassy aisles they wandered, reading the quaint, voluminous epitaphs, carved in an age that had more leisure than our own.[46]

The text goes into some depth about the gravestone carvings and styles:

Every citizen of Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John’s, for, if he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For the most part no great art or skill was lavished on those old tombstones. The larger number are of roughly chiselled brown or gray native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempt at ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this grizzly decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub’s head. Many are prostrate and in ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has been gnawing, until some inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can only be deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard is very full and very bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly, forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond.[46]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Old Burying Ground National Historic Site of Canada. Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
  2. ↑ Old Burying Ground. Canadian Register of Historic Places. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
  3. ↑ p. 142
  4. ↑ Wiki Tree
  5. ↑ p. 186
  6. ↑ http://66.43.22.135/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSob=n&GSsr=481&GScid=2203785&GRid=164094020&
  7. ↑ Deputy Commissary General at Halifax
  8. ↑ https://books.google.ca/books?id=SvdGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA226&lpg=PA226&dq=General+W.+Handfield+Snelling&source=bl&ots=nW6S88bXwI&sig=aYkL8WRBmFZaMf_mSdIeWRgwAl4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi50O7Ou8fPAhXl34MKHce0BpkQ6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=General%20W.%20Handfield%20Snelling&f=false
  9. ↑ Benjamin Kent - American Loyalist, p. 409
  10. ↑ http://boston1775.blogspot.ca/search/label/Benjamin%20Kent
  11. ↑ http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0048
  12. ↑ graduate of harvard 1727; attorney general; 1776-1780 at Suffolk
  13. ↑ https://books.google.ca/books?id=UlibMcgeiJMC&pg=PR102&lpg=PR102&dq=%22benjamin+kent%22+harvard+1727&source=bl&ots=jJi02QRLPP&sig=PzwMzM8cEelIDnPKQQl5437lzDA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYs-mf9crPAhVK74MKHQziBYwQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=%22benjamin%20kent%22%20harvard%201727&f=false
  14. ↑ http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Burton-5171
  15. ↑ Life of William Pepperrell, p. 338
  16. ↑ Canadian Biography
  17. 1 2
  18. ↑ p. 650
  19. ↑ http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/deblois_sarah_6E.html
  20. ↑ Image and Brief bio. Annals. North British Society
  21. ↑ Geddes - Loyalist
  22. ↑ History of the county of Annapolis. p. 350
  23. ↑ Prince Edward was his commander and etched on his stone: "This Stone Sacred to the Memory of Lieut. Chales Thomas of His Majesty's Royal Fusilier Regiment who departed this Life on the 16 August 1797, Aged 24 years; is placed as a Testimony of His Friendship and Esteem by Lieut. General His Royal Highness Prince Edward his Colonel."
  24. ↑ Halifax Acadian Recorder, April 15, 1920
  25. ↑ Naval Chronicle Vol. 1, p. 174
  26. ↑ Sutherland
  27. ↑ A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great ..., Volume 4 By John Burke, p. 435
  28. ↑ The Royal Military Calandar
  29. ↑ Naval Chronicle, p. 440
  30. ↑ To Dr Rowlands, On the death of his wife, Naval Chronicle, Vol. 37, p. 497
  31. ↑ Gentleman's Magazine
  32. ↑ Ashore and Afloat: The British Navy and the Halifax Naval Yard Before 1820 By Julian Gwyn, pp. 50-53
  33. ↑ Dr. Rowlands obituary
  34. ↑ Deborah Trask. Putting the War of 1812 to Rest. Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society Journal. Vol. 18, 2015, p.49
  35. ↑ p. 71
  36. ↑ Life of William Pepperrell, p. 338
  37. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/pepperrellsiname00howa#page/36/mode/2up/search/halifax
  38. ↑ p. 16
  39. ↑ http://www.brookhousepress.ca/louisa/appendix/a.htm
  40. ↑ Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, Volumes 7-10 By Nova Scotia Historical Society, Halifax, p. 152
  41. ↑ Canadian Biography
  42. ↑ Canadian Biography
  43. ↑ Rev. Perkins was born at Horton, Nova Scotia and studied at Kings College, Windsor, Nova Scotia to become a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He died inTorbay, Devon, England. (See Nova Scotia Archives
  44. ↑ A Geography and History of the County of Digby
  45. ↑ p. 45)
  46. 1 2 3 "Anne of the Island, by Lucy Maud Montgomery". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2016-11-20.

External links

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