Kidd Vault
Location:
45 Simcoe Street, Mono Mills, Town of Caledon, Peel Region, Ontario, Canada.
Concession 1, lot 39, Albion Township.
GPS:
Latitude: 43.94698°N
Longitude: -79.96336°W
History:
The Kidd Vault is located in the village of Mono Mills and above the vault is an inscription: “J. Kidd, 1892.”
In about 1933 William Perkins Bull described this vault as follows:
“While traveling west on the county line between Peel and Simcoe counties, just east of Mono Mills may be seen on the Albion side a cement vault in the hill bank. This is on the south side at the top of a big winding hill. It is known as Kidd’s Vault and here are the remains of some of the earliest pioneers of this district.”
Bull goes on to describe the vault as made of Credit Valley stone with a steel door and a wooden door thrown to one side, and that there are four people buried there. According to Bull, John Kidd was a hotel-keeper listed in the Directory of Peel, 1873-4, a very wealthy man, and one who was well respected. He lived to the ripe old age of 90 and just five years before his death married a second wife, a girl of 16. “Before he died, he had a vault built and a monument erected, and left money and instructions to his young wife as to how he was to be entombed. In this vault lies the body of old John Kidd, in a lead coffin, with a glass lid, through which one may look, if one desires, on the old man.” This story, however, is not borne out by the available evidence.
John Kidd came from County Wexford, Ireland with his wife Jane, and settled in Albion Township. John Lynch, in his 1873-4 Directory names John Kidd one of the original patentees of lands in the Township of Albion, on the 1st Concession, Lot 37. He is also shown as being there in the 1877 Peel Atlas, in the north-west corner of that township, near the village of Mono Mills. In every census from 1851 to 1891 he is described as a farmer. The 1851 census lists John Kidd with his wife, Jane, and nine children, including sons, Joseph, George, John, Thomas, Henry and William. According to the inscription on the vault Jane Kidd, his wife, died in 1893, so it is unlikely that John Kidd married a second wife five years before his death in 1895.
It seems that Bull’s notes have confused John Kidd, Senior, with his son, John Kidd, Junior, born about 1834, who is described in the various censuses as a merchant as well as a farmer. Lynch’s Directory lists a John Kidd of the Albion Hotel in Mono Mills.
Further notes by William Perkins Bull state that the body of George Kidd was exhumed from St. John’s Cemetery, Mono, and reinterred in the Kidd vault by his father. Further research shows a death record for a George Kidd, aged 50, of Mono Mills, who died December 17th, 1884, of a head injury as a result of an accident. This may be the George Kidd interred in the Kidd Vault though there is a discrepancy in the date of death.
Dorothy Kew, 2010
Transcription purchase:
No transcription has been made available for purchase, because the cemetery had so few stones.