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Old Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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History

The Old Burying Ground was founded in 1749, the same year as the settlement, as the town's first burial ground. It was originally non-denominational and for several decades was the only burial place for all Haligonians. (The burial ground was also used by St. Matthew's United Church). In 1793 it was turned over to the Anglican St. Paul's Church. The cemetery was closed in 1844 and the Camp Hill Cemetery established for subsequent burials. The site steadily declined until the 1980s when it was restored and refurbished by the Old Burying Ground Foundation, which now maintains the site and employ tour guides to interpret the site in the summer. Ongoing restoration of the rare 18th-century grave markers continues.

Over the decades some 12,000 people were interred in the Old Burial Ground. Today there are about 1,200 headstones, some having been lost and many others being buried with no headstone. Many notable residents are buried in the cemetery, including British Major General Robert Ross, who led the successful Washington Raid of 1814 and burned the White House before being killed in battle at Baltimore a few days later.

Commanders of three of the ships that served Governor Edward Cornwallis buried crew in unmarked graves: HMS Sphynx (1 crew), HMS Baltimore (1 crew) and HMS Albany (6 crew). HMS Sphynx was Cornwallis' own ship and the crew member was buried on the day his ship arrived in Halifax on 21 June 1749. HMS Albany was a 14-gun sloop commanded by Nova Scotia's senior naval officer, John Rous (1749–1753).

There are four recorded Mi'kmaq buried in the burial ground, including a Mi'kmaw Chief Francis [Muis]. There was also a "protestant indian" named John Tray, possibly from John Gorham's rangers.

There are also 167 recorded Black people buried in the graveyard, all with unmarked graves. (There is a grave marker, however, of the Huntingdonian Missionary who taught at the first school for Black students in Halifax, Reverend William Furmage.) Black people arrived with New England Planters. During the arrival of the Planters, there were 54 Black people in Halifax. 7 were buried in the cemetery from 1763 to 1775. Black Nova Scotians also arrived in Halifax with Boston Loyalists after the evacuation of Boston in 1776. During this period, 18 Black people were buried in the cemetery (1776–1782). Seventy-three free Black immigrants (and no slaves) also arrived in Halifax with the New York Loyalists after evacuation from New York in 1783. Of the 73 who arrived from New York, there were 4 burials that happened during this time period. Rev. John Breynton reported that in 1783 he baptized 40 Black people and buried many because of disease. Between the years 1792–1817 there are no recorded burials of Black Nova Scotians. The largest number of burials happen in the 1820s (72 graves), presumably the graves of the 155 Black Refugees who arrived in Halifax during the War of 1812.

The last erected and most prominent burial marker is the Welsford-Parker Monument, a Triumphal arch standing at the entrance to the cemetery commemorating British victory in the Crimean War. This is the first public monument built in Nova Scotia and is the fourth oldest war monument in Canada. It is also the only monument to the Crimean War in North America. The arch was built in 1860, 16 years after the cemetery had officially closed. The arch was built by George Lang and is named after two Haligonians, Major Augustus Frederick Welsford and Captain William Buck Carthew Augustus Parker. Both Nova Scotians died in the Battle of the Great Redan during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855). This monument was the last grave marker in the cemetery.

In 1938, the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts presented and dedicated a granite monument to Erasmus James Philipps, who is the earliest known settler of Nova Scotia (c. 1721) to be buried in the cemetery. He was also the founder of Freemasonry in present-day Canada (1737).

The Old Burying Ground was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1991. It had earlier been designated a Provincially Registered Property in 1988 under Nova Scotia's Heritage Property Act.

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