Grahamsville Wesleyan Methodist Cemetery
Also known as: Old Methodist Cemetery
Also known as: Torbram Cemetery
Also known as: Hopkins School House Cemetery
Location:
East Side of Torbram Road, North of Steeles Ave, Brampton Peel Region, Ontario, Canada.
Concession 6E, lot 2, Chinguacousy Township.
GPS:
Latitude: 43.71848°N
Longitude: -79.68551°W
History:
This cemetery, also known as Torbram Cemetery and Hopkins School House Cemetery, is located on the southwest corner of the west half of Lot 2 Concession 6 Chinguacousy Township. It is marked as a cemetery on the 1877 Peel Historical Atlas.
William Perkins Bull states that the section of land where the cemetery is was “level fertile clay, bank barn and brick house, Blind Creek on the south corner and watered by wells, with Old Grahamsville cemetery on the south corner. It is in deplorable condition – tombstone falling and fenced off by a wire fence. School Section # 24, known as Hopkins School, stood on this west half which at one time was used as a Wesleyan Methodist church, torn down about 1869.”
The church, therefore, does not show on the 1877 atlas, though the cemetery does. Trudy Mann points out in her book, Early Churches of Chinguacousy and Toronto Gore Townships in Peel County, that the school was used for church services before Grahamsville’s Shiloh Wesleyan Methodist Church was erected. Brian Gilchrist of the Region of Peel Archives suggests that the cemetery was most likely in use between 1837 and 1859, but was never officially a burying ground. The lot was owned by a John Jackson.
By the time that William Britnell recorded the cemetery in 1974, there were about nine remaining tombstones. These stones were soon after removed to the City of Brampton Work Yard and a cairn was erected at the location.
Dorothy Kew
Transcription purchase:
No transcription has been made available for purchase, because the cemetery has so few stones.