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Apropos the excavation for building purposes
that is proceeding on the site of the cemetery opened in 1832 off
Lewis street to relieve congestion in other burying grounds then
existing throughout the town, a correspondent asks where the
earlier cemeteries were situated, and if all of the remains
resting in them have been removed.
As may be understood from the foregoing
remarks, there were a number of cemeteries ante-dating that which
has vanished off Lewis street [sic]. Lewis street, its stones
having probably been pillaged for the walls of buildings or for
use as doorsteps and the bones periodically unearthed having been
re-interred in the present cemetery. One of these was adjacent to
Wall street church and from it some of the remains were
transferred to the Lewis street plot when it was opened more than
a century ago. Another lay adjacent to St. Francis Xavier's
church, where bones have also been uncovered, while a third was
situated in the grounds of the east-end residence of Mrs. G.H.
Brooke, between it and King street. There also was a Jones family
cemetery (with vault) on a rise of ground off Church street, west
of Perth stret [sic], whence all remains were transferred.
Victoria Park was, of course, originally the churchyard of St.
Peter's church, and there may have been others.
As the development of the community took place and
dwellings and other buildings were erected, those with an
interest in these plots removed to newer cemeteries the remains
of the people with whom they were identified. The other stones
remained together with the mortal remains of those they
identified.
Thus it is, unknown to the occupants of some houses
throughout the town, skeletons of long-forgotten Brockvillians
lie underneath gardens or lawns where their existence is
discovered only when chance excavation is undertaken. This is
particularly true of the Lewis street section where the bodies of
many of the poor immigrants who perished in the cholera epidemic
of 1832 were buried in pits after their hasty removal from the
cholera-sheds of Blockhouse Island.
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