Laurel Hill Cemetery
Location:
399 Centennial Drive (Bolton), Caledon, Peel Region, Ontario, Canada.
Concession 7, lot 10, Albion Township.
GPS:
Latitude: 43.8841°N
Longitude: -79.7465°W
History:
In 1891, Albert Dodds, undertaker and carriage maker and Andrew McFall, miller and leading business man made a tour of cemeteries in other communities. They returned convinced that Bolton must move with the times and organize a committee to inaugurate a public cemetery. The Laurel Cemetery Company was organized at a meeting held in the Bolton Town Hall on March 27, 1893. The presiding officer at the meeting was Bryan Dowling. They began by selling shares at ten dollars a piece, each share would guarantee a four-grave plot to the contributor. When seventy-four shares had been sold the sale closed, and the organization of the cemetery was completed. The Laurel Hill Cemetery Company was registered on Oct. 27, 1893. The charter officers were: Henry A Rutherford, President; Albert A. Dodds, Secretary; Andrew A McFall, Treasurer; and Charles Jaffary, Robert Burton, Albert Rutherford, Dr. David Bonnar, William Dick, and Edwin A. Jaffary, Directors.
The proposed location was part of the east half lot 10 concession 6 Albion Township owned by Samuel Stewart. By quit claim deed dated October 10, 1892, he conveyed the land to his sister, Lily Bunt; by further quit claim deed dated the same day, the land was further conveyed to Andrew McFall, Albert Dodds, Edwin A. Jaffary, Dr. David Bonnar and William Dick. A further deed was given by these men to the Laurel Hill Cemetery Company, which was registered on the 23rd day of January 1893. Since this first meeting, the annual meeting is always held on the third Monday of January each year. The Laurel Hill Cemetery Company was incorporated under the provisions of the Revised Statutes of Ontario, Chapter 175.
For the next twenty years, Laurel Hill was the main burial grounds for the communities of Bolton, Macville, Burlington, Shiloh, Cedar Mills, Holly Park, Mount Wolfe, Palgrave, Castlederg Coventry, Schomberg RR#3, Nashville, Kleinburg and Nobleton. It remained the main cemetery for the people in these areas until Nashville established a cemetery in 1913.
The mammoth undertaking of turning raw hilly farmland into the kind of setting people would want for their last resting place began with a survey by Jesse Nunn Bolton, a public land surveyor and a grandson of James Bolton, the founder of the village. It was decided to plan for four-grave plots with one row of monuments to serve two rows of plots. Between the edges of each plot would be an allowance of two feet for a path. The four-grave plots were twelve feet wide, allowing three feet for each burial space and the distance from the centre of each row of monuments was to be twenty-four feet. Each plot owner would be permitted six feet for erecting a monument, with the memorial for one plot facing the family plot and another monument facing the other way for the opposite plot. A purchaser of two plots back-to-back could have the monument placed in the centre of eight graves, allowing full use of both sides of the stone. Families requiring sixteen burial spaces could place a tall four-sided square monument diagonally in the centre of the four plots, thus allowing the inscriptions to be recorded on the side of the monument facing the respective burial sites.
The labour to grade and level the land, build the roads and lay out the first five sections was provided by volunteers. Such volunteer work bees have been the mainstays for the improvements and beautification of Laurel Hill over the years.
For a long time, in the early operation of the cemetery, the use of numbered corner posts for each plot was thought unnecessary. The family name inscribed on the marble corner markers was considered ample identification of the plot. However, as the cemetery expanded, these corner markers became a vital part of the survey and it was deemed necessary to use numbered corner markers. In later years the newer plots have been marked with both the plot number and owner’s name. In the late 1980’s the markers that had sunken were raised onto solid ground and the numbering of all sold plots completed.
As the property developed lawns, shrubs and trees were planted, and well-kept road ways and fences constructed. A cement wall was built from the entrance to the deep gully on the southwest side to form section seven. Embedded in the wall were many rings to tie up the horses. Also a regular tie-rail with cedar posts and iron pipe, was constructed in a north-easterly direction toward the Stewart farm house. To facilitate foot traffic a ninety-foot wooden trestle bridge was built across the ravine, with the sidewalk being extended from the bridge to the village.
The first building on the property was the octagonal shaped “Dead House” facing the main entrance built in 1893-94. It was used to house the coffins of the deceased persons during the winter months awaiting a spring burial. This practice was discontinued in the mid nineteen twenties due to the graves settling and the advent of steel and concrete vaults. Some supposedly spring burials, however did not take place until late May or early June. The families did not like the aspect of bodies of deceased members being stored in the Dead House for up to five or six months. Therefore, the practice began of thawing the grave site by burning wood in a shallow trench covered by a sheet of heavy galvanized iron. Later a patented grave thawer was used until such time as a tractor with a back hoe was put into service.
A brick building was erected in 1900 inside the main gate to serve as a waiting room and tool storage area. During the cold winter months, after the service at the grave side, families would gather round the wood burning box stove to bid farewell to relatives and friends before bundling up in blankets and buffalo robes for the ride back home by sleigh and cutter.
A well was dug to receive rain water and later replaced by a town water line along most of the driveways.
When the cemetery commenced operations Albion Township deeded it the road allowance on the north side of the cemetery for one dollar, to allow the property to be fenced. Eventually Highway Fifty was straightened with the Department of Highways (now the Ministry of Transport) purchasing the old right-of-way. Surplus clay from the excavation of the new road was used to fill the deep ravine on the opposite side of the cemetery and the old wood trestle bridge, which was falling into disrepair, was dismantled. This also provided for additional burial sites. The old road was also renamed Centennial Drive.
The newest building, which was constructed in 1969, is an attractive “A” frame chapel designed by local architect Mr. Muller. It is situated in the northeast portion of the cemetery. It is electrically heated, and when necessary provides comfortable accommodation for family and friends during the committal service in the winter months. Most of the driveways have been widened and paved to accommodate the large automobile funeral corteges. The centre drive has been extended between sections four and eight to provide a new access from Centennial Drive as well as to provide more burial plots in both sections.
The cemetery is funded by the sale of cemetery plots and donations from plot owners. In 1954 a perpetual care fund was implemented and part of the purchase price of plots is allocated to this fund. Several plots have been transferred to surviving family members over the past few years. Generally these are plots which were purchased fifty to eighty years ago much below current rates, which have risen dramatically over this period. When such a transfer takes place, the recipients are asked to make a donation of a few hundred dollars to the perpetual care fund for each four-grave plot, to bring maintenance charges into line with today’s costs.
The first burial, according to the records, was Joseph Taylor who died on October 18, 1893 (no 374). In the first five years of operation one hundred and seventy-five plots had been sold and one hundred and nineteen burials had taken place. Many early burials were the removal of deceased persons from other local burying grounds. For the first ten years removals kept pace with burials, but then gradually tapered off. Over the years plots have been subdivided into two-grave plots. A section has been created for cremations consisting of over three hundred three-foot square lots large enough to accommodate up to three urns and a space for a twelve by twenty inch grave marker. Also a free standing marble mausoleum, yet to be erected, will contain about one hundred cremations. The niches will be four tiers high and sealed from inside the structure. The names and dates will be cut into the face of the individual marble sections.
The first caretaker, Henry Booth maintained a register book, listing most of the burials and dates of death. George A. Norton who succeeded Mr. Booth continued the practice of keeping a record book until his retirement in 1942. Apparently the Secretary had not maintained a burial register since 1908. Considerable time and effort were expended by some of the Board of Directors in the early Nineteen Thirties endeavouring to locate and list the names of the plot owners and burial dates in Laurel Hill, even going as far as to search out names in the Ontario Provincial Archives. The information was compiled into a register which became the first accurate listing of all interments in their respective grave spaces along with the names of the plot owners. The records are now contained in a set of loose-leaf binders that numerically record all plot owners section by section, range by range, plot by plot and accurately list names and dates of burials. To assist the public in locating ancestral burials, one other register is maintained listing all plot owners in alphabetical order with names and yearly burial dates of all interments. A cross reference is also included, as at least 10 percent of the burials are of persons with a different surname than the registered plot owner.
In the early nineteen twenties space was provided by the Company inside the front entrance of the cemetery for the location of a War Memorial to honour those veterans who had enlisted from the area in the First World War. Through public subscription a memorial of Canadian granite, designed by the Thompson Monument Co, Toronto, was erected in October 1921 and suitably inscribed with their names and a list of the battlegrounds in France. At the dedication ceremony Mrs. Peter Munro of Palgrave, who lost two sons in the conflict, unveiled the memorial. After the second World War, the names of local veterans who had made the supreme sacrifice were inscribed on a bronze plaque attached to the monument. A tribute was added after the Korean War, in memory of those who perished in that conflict.
In 1967, as a centenary project, it was proposed that the cenotaph be moved to a more convenient location to accommodate some of the older veterans. With the changing of the Highway the cenotaph was somewhat separated from the Village that made the climb to it a little arduous. Not all veterans however agreed that it should be moved from its original foundation. Permission from Albion Township and the Cemetery Board was obtained for the move in May 1967. In the summer of 1969 the Bolton Branch 371 of the Royal Canadian Legion arranged to have the cenotaph moved from its original location to the southeast portion of the cemetery where it is more readily seen from the Highway. The area has been attractively landscaped and the cenotaph floodlit, making a very attractive park setting for a memorial to the war veterans.
The Cemetery Board maintains both the cenotaph and the Old Anglican and Methodist Church Burying Grounds (located on the opposite side of Centennial Drive). Funds are provided by the Bolton Branch of the Legion to maintain the former and the Town of Caledon underwrites the care of the latter.
In 1958 the Cemetery Board inaugurated a biennial Memorial Service at the cemetery on the forth Sunday in June. The centennial of Laurel Hill Cemetery will take place in 1994.
(The foregoing has been extracted from the booklet entitled, A History of Laurel Hill Cemetery 1893-1988 written by William E. Egan, with excerpts from the Bolton Enterprise.)
Ronald Hibbert, 1993
Transcription purchase:
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