St. John’s Anglican Church Cemetery
Also known as: Edmonton Cemetery
Location:
Between 11859 and 11865 Hurontario Street, Snelgrove, Peel Region, Ontario, Canada.
Concession 1 East, part Lot 17, Chinguacousy Township.
GPS:
Latitude: 43.7331°N
Longitude: -79.8226°W
History:
Tucked away behind a garage and home on the east side of Hurontario Street (number 10 Highway or Centre Road), south of Mayfield Road, is a tiny cemetery which belonged to St. John’s Anglican Church. The property is overgrown with trees and scrub bushes, and the only access to it is by a right-of-way between the garage property and the home immediately to the south.
Although most of Chinguacousy was settled by 1820 and the Township headquarters was at Edmonton (Snelgrove by 1859), the Anglicans did not have a place of worship there until St. John’s was opened about 1845. The only contact parishioners in central Chinguacousy had with their mother church was when they took the arduous journey to Toronto for a baptism or marriage by the Rev. Dr. John Strachan at St. James Cathedral. It was not until the winter of 1833 when Strachan appointed Adam Elliot as a roving missionary to a huge territory which stretched from Pickering on the east, to Halton County on the west, and as far north as Penetanguishene, that the Edmonton area got its first brief introduction to an Ontario Anglican priest. Adam Elliot traveled by horseback when possible and often by foot to get from one home to another where he held services. When he left in late 1835 to help the First Nations peoples near Sault Ste. Marie, he recommended that his territory be served by ten priests.
An interesting aside on Adam, who spent most of his ministry at Tuscarora, Ontario, is that his wife’s sister married George Johnson and their youngest daughter was the famous poet, Pauline Johnson. In his book From Strachan to Owen, William Perkins Bull wrote: “Itinerants of the Elliot type could not set up any permanent organization, but had to confine themselves to reawakening lapsed loyalties, strengthening the hands of staunch laymen, and proving to the backwoods immigrant community that the Church had not abandoned or forgotten them”. Adam Elliot, who as a young man suffered from poor health, was described by Bull thus: “but heat or cold, rain or snow, good roads or bad, even mosquito infested bogs, meant nothing to the frail but indomitable Adam Elliot. He was about his Master’s business.”.
St. John’s was erected during the great wave of Anglican church building in the early 1840s under the guidance of William Stewart Darling, George Stephen Joseph Hill, and Henry Bath Osler, and their ministry penetrated into the heart of Chinguacousy. It would appear that the little congregation was at first a mission of St. Mary’s, Tullamore, in the Chinguacousy parish. Anyone searching for early records of Chinguacousy should look at Elliot’s registers, St. James Cathedral, Toronto, and then St. Mary’s, Tullamore registers, which are in the Anglican Diocesan Archives, Toronto. Located in the Bull files at the Region of Peel Archives are the names of persons baptized at the Mission of Centre Road, Chinguacousy (St. John’s) on October 26, 1844. The family names are as follows: Campbell, Gray, MacConnell, MacCullum, Shelton, Van Whycke, and Weaver.
The land for St. John’s church was given by Duncan and Ann Gilchrist. William Buffy, the local tavern-keeper, witnessed the deed. The building of St. John’s in 1845 was six years before the first Anglican church was built in Brampton. However, by 1855 St. John’s had been separated from Tullamore and was an out-station of Christ Church, Brampton. There are some baptismal records for Edmonton at Christ Church dating from 1851 to 1856 which were compiled by June Cuthbert. Names mentioned are: Buffy, Dawson, Deurm, Earngey, Golden, Guy, Moody, Nelson, Nesbitt, Nolan, Quinn, Scott, and Watson.
The Rev. Isaac Middleton was priest at Brampton and Snelgrove from 1871 to 1873. However, there is every indication that St. John’s was almost dormant by this time. Middleton was priest at nearby Campbell’s Cross from 1874 to 1877, and he had obviously abandoned Snelgrove in the hope of getting more parishioners further north in the township. Bull recounts an amusing incident about the two churches: “… Campbell’s Cross obtained its seats from St. John’s Edmonton, but that moribund congregations, revived by Broughall, drove over in a militant body and demanded its property.”
In the 1930s Bull describes St. John’s cemetery as follows: “St. John’s Edmonton is a little, long-disused burial-ground, its headstones now flattened, which may have belonged to local churchmen back in the hopeful forties. Benjamin Booth, Irish centenarian, was buried here in 1894. Beside him lie Hunters, Groats, Nixons, Thorntons, Watson, and Woodalls.”
Lois Neely
References:
W. P. Bull, From Strachan to Owen, 1938
Walker & Miles, Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Peel, 1877
St. James Anglican Church, Caledon East, 1843-1978
Lois A. Neely. Trinity Church, Campbell’s Cross, 1980
Brown’s Toronto City & Home District Directory, 1846-7
True Davidson. Brampton Centennial Souvenir, 1853-1953
Trudy Mann & Jan (Speers) Duff. People of Peel, 1981
Addendum: Trudy Mann, in her book, Early Churches of Chinguacousy and Toronto Gore Townships in Peel County, records that the cemetery was located to the rear of the church on Lot 17 Concession 1 East. “By Perkins Bull’s time of gathering information, in the 1930s, the stones were in poor shape and very few were legible. The church land and building were sold. Allowance was made for a right-of-way to enable access to the cemetery which is now under the care of the City of Brampton. In 1998 only two stones were found – one broken in half and the other smashed into at least thirty pieces.”
Dorothy Kew
Transcription purchase:
No transcription has been made available for purchase, because the cemetery has so few stones.