The cemetery in Savary Park began sometime after the Savary family settled here in 1786.  Probably the last Savary's to be buried there were Nathan (1748-1826), the Loyalist founder of the family in NS, and his second wife, Deidamia Sabine (dau. of Jeremiah Sabine) whom he married in Digby 28 May 1785 and by whom he had 12 children in NS--he had had 5 children in Waltham, Mass. by his first wife who died before he migrated.  Deidamia died after 1837 (I have not yet determined the exact date), and was probably the last member of the family buried there.  They had had a son, Lemuel, who died in infancy, c.1790, and he was doubtless buried there as well, indeed, was probably the first to be interred there.  Who else was buried there, I have no idea.  But Sabine Savary (2nd child/lst son) of the marriage, who built Savary House (across the road from the Park in 1820), his wife, Olivia Marshall (whom he married 15 Nov 1821) and three of their four children (including Judge Alfred William Savary) and descendents were buried in the new cemetery of Trinity Church, Digby.

 

The handsome black-marble stone in the Provincial Park cemetery, memorializing Nathan and Deidamia, was erected in the early 1930s by Ven. Alfred William Savary Garden, who inherited the property from his mother Eliza Helen (md. James Garden, Sussex NB), his aunt Margaret Jane--both daughters of Sabine Savary--and his uncle and namesake, Judge Savary.  At the time, the cemetery was of course in the property's lower 16 acres--it was AWS Garden's widow, Maude (nee Woodhouse), who deeded the shore acres to the Province as a Park in memory of the Savary family in 1962.  The Province erected the sturdy iron fence surrounding the stone.  However, the location of the cemetery is suppositional--AWS Garden, b.1870, in Fredericton NB, spent time in the house in his youth, but was not able to recall the exact location of the cemetery, though the site he chose was clearly in the proper environs  and by virtue of its height above the surrounding area the logical place for interments. 

 

I am one of two grandsons of Ven. A.W.S. Garden and Maude Woodhouse Garden--the other is my first cousin, Alfred William Savary Garden II, who lives to the west of Savary House.  We were left the entire property by will upon the death of Maude in 1968, and amicably divided the whole in 1977, by which I took Savary House.   The House has been a Provincial Heritage property since 1990, and a plaque commemorating it as the birthplace of Judge Savary (1831) was placed at the front door in the early 1960s or late 1950s.  I am, and have been for many years, Professor of History and Law and Co-Chair of the Canadian Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley, and my wife, family, and I have spent all of every summer since 1977 maintaining the House and property. 

Thomas Garden Barnes