Old Port Medway Cemetery by Robert Whitelaw
The Old Port Medway Cemetery is located on Port Medway Road in the fishing village of Port Medway, near the community wharf and the Port Medway Lighthouse Park (Municipal Heritage status pending for the lighthouse, built in 1899). The first written reference to the cemetery is from the Liverpool Township’s Proprietors’ Records of Tuesday, March 28, 1786: “voted that a Publick Burying Ground containing one acre of land be allowed and laid out in Port Medway.” However it was not until October 27, 1820 that the Old Cemetery was officially deeded from Milton and Phebe Foster to the inhabitants of Port Medway (Book 7, p. 330).
In the meantime, many burials had already taken place. The earliest stone is the winged-skull slate marker of the “Connecticut Yankee” Samuel Mack, who died in 1783 at the age of 47. There are three other eighteenth century slate markers of the New England type.
Samuel Mack is of interest not only as the archetypal “Connecticut Yankee” entrepreneur, the founder of what was to become the Edward Doran Davison lumber empire, which relocated to Bridgewater after the devastating fire of 1865, but as a slave-holder. (He advertised for the return of run-away slave Chance.) Mack was the great uncle of Joseph Smith Jr., the Mormon Prophet (Samuel’s brother Solomon was Smith’s maternal grandfather) and foster-parent to William Burke, credited with being the first permanent settler in North Queens. Samuel Mack was responsible for establishing the Macks as the dominant family at Port Medway Mills, later Mills Village, finally Mill Village.
What makes the Old Cemetery unique is its size (about 300 monuments memorializing approximately 350 people), its beautiful waterfront location overlooking the outer harbour, its location next to the historic Seely Hall, its proximity to the Port Medway Lighthouse Park, and the variety and quality of its monuments. It contains a veritable encyclopedia of motifs and symbols (flowers, birds, hands, crosses, lambs, urns, willows, open book, and purely decorative scroll-work), types of monument (field stones, slates, sandstones, “white stones”, granites, “white bronze” [really cast zinc], and cement) and a wide variety of inscriptions, from poetic to prosaic. In addition to the stones presumed to have been imported from New England, monument companies from Liverpool, Halifax, Kentville, Saint John, and St. Thomas, Ontario are represented.
Reflecting its historical importance as a tangible link to the past locally, province-wide and beyond, the Old Cemetery was registered as a Heritage Property by the Municipality of the Region of Queens in 2007, and by the Province of Nova Scotia in 2008.
Since 1945 the cemetery had been cared for and administered by the Old Cemetery Association, until its merger with the Greenwood Cemetery Company in 2002 to form the present Port Medway Cemeteries Committee, a provincially registered not-for-profit society chaired by Ricky Baker. The cemetery is maintained by this small core of volunteers who mow the grass, cut back brush, trim trees, clean up blow-downs after storms and generally keep the cemetery ship-shape.
Around 1990, a major armour-rock project was completed to protect the rapidly-eroding sea-side cliff, after skeletons were exposed. As Marguerite Letson puts it in her book Port, edited by Duncan Harper: “When the last trump sounds ‘Granny’ Cohoon and her friends may find themselves back in Cape Cod from whence they came, or, who knows, they may have to collect their bones from the shores of Old Plymouth, from which their ancestors set sail in the Mayflower.” So far, at least, Granny Cohoon and her friends are still resting comfortably ashore thanks to timely intervention.
In 2007, a group of Port Medway artists, led by Fran Whitelaw and Rachel Summers, got together to discuss the possibility of a group show and recognized the potential of the dis-used and un-maintained cement-block building (former fish plant warehouse) on the Lighthouse Park property. And wishing to contribute something back to the community, they agreed to contribute 25% of their sales to the Old Cemetery. Presenting a very successful show in the warehouse, featuring a grand opening with refreshments and live music–all paid for by the artists themselves–and a popular cemetery tour, they succeeded in their three goals: show-casing local artists, calling attention to the potential of the warehouse building, and making a significant contribution to the Old Cemetery.
Given the great success of this event, and other plans for utilizing the facility in 2008, the Municipality completed necessary maintenance: shingled the roof, reinstalled electricity, and did some interior work. In 2008, the artists staged their second show under more civilized conditions, once again making a substantial donation to the Old Cemetery; the building was used for a number of other functions, including children’s art programs, and a very successful major exhibit of old photographs and other historical material, Old Port: Scanning the Past.
Also in 2008, following a one year hiatus, the reconstituted Port Medway Readers’ Festival under the leadership of Betty Lou Hemeon, once again presented a sold-out season of three readings. Proceeds, donated to the Old Cemetery, were immediately used to install a sign, and commission an assessment report and plan of action from Heather Lawson, restoration stonemason.
Thanks to the generosity of the Port Medway artists, the Readers’ Festival, private donors, and promised financial support through the Province of Nova Scotia’s Heritage Property Program, we have planned an ambitious summer program, which includes the implementation of the Lawson Report: restoring and stabilizing grave markers; remedial site work; and beginning the process of mapping, photographing, transcribing inscriptions, and documenting makers and special characteristics of each stone, in accordance with accepted heritage cemetery guidelines..
The 2009 Readers’ Festival and the Port Medway artists will once again contribute to the on-going work at the Old Cemetery.
Originally printed in The Griffin, Vol. 34, No. 2 (June 2009)
Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia
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