The Forgotten Ones

At the back of Orangeville's Greenwood Cemetery is a sad group of forgotten gravestones. In the bush, down a dirt path, behind where the cemetery staff dump the old dirt and branches, at the edge of the fence line can be found several graves and markers that are hidden from view. Do the cemetery staff even know these are here? The main cemetery is active, but these abandoned graves may date from a time before the large graveyard was even in place. From what I can read on the weathered and broken old gravestones, it appears that they are from the 1850s. Some are broken, some covered n moss, some are standing upright and in decent condition, all in a row, not as though they where simply discarded here, but lovingly placed here a long time ago. What ever became of the families whose ancestors rest hidden in the forest? Very curious why these poor forgotten souls have been lost over the years.

When Sean White was searching for a prospective grave plot for himself at Greenwood Cemetery last Thursday (May 24), the Orangeville man was surprised by what he found. Searching the cemetery lands, White went a little bit off the beaten track and followed the dirt road at the western edge of the cemetery into the nearby woods. As the sun shone through the trees, White saw the silhouette of several tombstones standing along the property’s fence line.

“They’re from the 19th century,” White said. “I have to let somebody know about this. ... The forgotten grave of the 19th century.” They’re not quite forgotten, but “unaccounted for” would be a more accurate description, explained Steve Brown, archivist for the Dufferin County Museum & Archives (DCMA). While it is unlikely their bodies were buried there, how did their headstones get placed on the forested perimeter of Greenwood Cemetery? “How much of a story do you want?” Brown laughed. “There is a bit more to it than just an old headstone.” The story starts in the late-1800s when Orangeville had three graveyards — the Bethel Presbyterian Church and Cemetery where the post office is today, St. Mark’s Anglican Burying Ground on Broadway and the Methodist Church and Cemetery on the south side of Church Street. By the mid-1870s, those burial grounds were full, and townspeople were suspicious about the impact those bodies might have on their drinking water. “They thought there might be body water seeping into their well water,” Brown said. “We’ll just leave it at that.” As a result, town council appointed a committee to look at available land outside the town limits for a new cemetery. In 1876, it created the Orangeville Cemetery, which is now known as Greenwood Cemetery. It was only the second publicly owned cemetery in Ontario, Brown noted.

Not everybody agreed with the site chosen. Another group of citizens bought a piece of property on the north side of Orangeville, what is known as the Forest Lawn Cemetery today. Given society’s panic the bodies in those existing cemeteries were polluting well water, the town unearthed its dead and moved them into those two new burial grounds. That wasn’t completed, or so many thought, until about 10 years later, Brown said.