The early Scottish Settlers to Upper Canada and their influence here in Canada - Part 3
By Nancy Dupuis
Auld Kirk Cemetery, Almonte, ON
Resources:
Excerpts from recent Annual Meeting Reports from the Almonte United Church, in Almonte, Ontario provided by the current Auld Kirk Board Cemetery Board Secretary for use in our search of the history of the area and the influence of our early Scottish settlers
Constructed in 1835-36 in an early form of Gothic Revival architecture, this cemetery is a beautiful well-maintained property fitting to the memory of our forefathers.
The Auld Kirk holds deep meaning to me as many of my family, current and past are laid to rest here.
I found this bit of information on the cemetery tucked away in my genealogy files and so sparked my interest to delve further into my past.
James Aitken and his sister Marion came to Canada in 1831 from Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. They settled in Horton Township, near Renfrew, Ontario. The farm in Huntley Township, Concession 11, Lot 1, West, where James and his family later moved held a limestone quarry. From this quarry, James drew stone with a team of oxen in the winters of 1835 and 1836 to build the Auld Kirk near Almonte, Ontario, a distance of 10 or twelve miles. The Auld Kirk was completed in the year of 1836. For a number of years, the Auld Kirk has been used as a vault in the winter; it is still a very fine building and in good repair. The cemetery surrounding the Church has many old headstones of the early settlers to this area.
James Aitken, born in 1802 in Scotland was, I’m proud to say, was my great-great grandfather – Nancy (McKenzie) Dupuis
What follows are excerpts and photos from those annual reports with permission of their use by the current Auld Kirk Board Secretary.
The building at Country Road 16, known as Auld Kirk, is situated at the northwest corner of Country Road 16 and Concession 8, in the Town of Mississippi Mills.
The exterior of the building and the scenic character of the property are protected by an Ontario Heritage Trust conservation easement. A provincial plaque was erected at the site in 1970. The property is also designated by the Town of Mississippi Mills under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act.
HERITAGE VALUE: Auld Kirk's historical and architectural value is enhanced by its pastoral setting. The church is accessed through a stone and iron fence. It is surrounded on two sides by a large cemetery, at a country intersection. The cemetery contains many old gravestones of the area's earliest settlers and their descendants, and is surrounded by trees, creating a natural border to the site.
Auld Kirk is associated with the early Scottish, Presbyterian, settlers who came to Ontario. A survey, conducted in 1819-20, by the chief surveyor of Upper Canada, identified land available for settlement, in Ramsay Township (today amalgamated into the Town of Mississippi Mills). Among the first to arrive during this period were Scottish emigrants, who had been affected by the depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars. They had immigrated to Upper Canada with the assistance of the Lanark Society. Many of these emigrants were members of the Established Church of Scotland, and, for more than a decade, their religious needs were met by Rev. George Buchanan and Rev. William Bell, the first resident minister of the Rideau settlement. These missionaries made frequent visits to Ramsay Township but did not establish any congregations or churches. As the number of Scottish settlers grew, so too did the need for a resident minister and place of worship. The first minister, to permanently take up duties in Ramsay Township, was the Rev. John Fairburn, who assumed the role in early 1834. He had received his appointment from the Glasgow Colonial Society, in March 1833, and served until 1842. Within two years of Rev. Fairburn's arrival, the congregation built a church and a manse, on land purchased from John Mitchell, one of the first settlers in the area. Possibly due to the controversy brewing in the Church of Scotland, prior to the Disruption of 1843, Rev. Fairburn decided to leave Auld Kirk and return to Scotland, to minister to a Free Church congregation. Services continued at the Auld Kirk until 1864, when a new church, St. Andrew's, was built in Almonte. Since then, the Auld Kirk has only been used for special services. Part of the church is used as a mortuary vault, or as a chapel for memorial services, for the adjoining cemetery. This church stands as a testament to the faith and hard work of early Presbyterian settlers in the area. Auld Kirk is significant as an example of vernacular architecture with Gothic Revival details. It is associated with early religious structures of Presbyterian settlers to Ontario. Auld Kirk is constructed of coursed-rubble stone and has a rectangular plan. On each side of the church there are three large windows, with rough-cut stone lintels, and ashlar stone sills. Despite the stone construction, the size of the windows gives the church a sense of delicacy and lightness. All windows are of a Gothic Revival style with simple lancets and thin wood muntin bars. The tops are decorated with intersecting tracery. On the gable, front façade, there is a large central door capped by a lancet window. On either side of the entrance are two lancet windows of equal size, with intersecting tracery. Above the door there is a small gothic-arch window, that has the same dimensions and size, as the top intersecting tracery work, of the main windows. Two of the windows, along the nave wall nearest to the sanctuary, have been filled in to allow for the conversion of the church to a mortuary chapel, with a crypt above ground. The roof is at a shallow pitch and has simple wood brackets, return eaves and a small stone chimney.
The article below speaks of the layout of the cemetery and details of the first actual burial.
Courtesy of the Almonte Gazette.
From the first settlement of Ramsay Township, 1820, religious services were provided for the scattered settlers by occasional visits from Reverends Bel- in the issue of December 30th of 1898 the Almonte Gazette wrote about the history of Auld Kirk and additions were made to complete the history in 1934 to document its 100th year. The Cemetery dates from 1834, when the congregation of St. Andrew’s Church in connection with the Established Church of Scotland, elected its first Session, and celebrated its first Communion Service. It was not until 1830 that a regular preaching station was established under the ministry of Rev. John Fairbairn at the Eight Line of Ramsay, and not until 1836 that the Church Building was complete. The site selected was the southeast comer of lot 16 on the 8th line, where the land at the extreme corner was shallow and suitable for the location of a building, and elsewhere is a deep clay mould well adapted for burial purposes. The deeds show that two-and-a-half acres were bought from J. Mitchell and that later 3 acres was bought from Elizabeth Mansell; and that finally Range D was bought from J. Camelon; the whole forming a compact area of seven acres, stretching westward to the Tannery Creek, and northward along the 8th line towards the 8th Line Schoolhouse. Andrew Cannon, a lad of four years of age who met his death by drowning, was the first person buried in the cemetery, a fact attested by an inscription on the Cannon Monument situated just west of the Auld Kirk. The burial service was conducted by Rev. John Fairbairn who about this time, 1836, resigned his charge and returned to Scotland. In 1876, the ground first purchased was surveyed by Robert McFarlane and laid out in burial plots of about ten feet square intersected by streets crossing one another at right angles. About twenty years later the second purchase was surveyed off similarly by E. T. Wilkie; and years later the last addition was surveyed in the same checkerboard design by Mr. Malcolm McFarlane, B.Sc., a cousin of the first surveyor. The Cemetery is thus laid out in parallel strips designated as Ranges A. B. C. D. etc., the plots being numbered consecutively across each Range along the east side of each cross-street, and back along the west side. Any plot can be located readily by giving its Range letter and plot number as they appear on the old surveyors’ drawings. From its beginnings the Auld Kirk was split into the Established Church and Free Church adherents; and the Free Church acquired a site for a place of worship and a cemetery a short distance south of the Auld Kirk on the 8th Line. The soil here proved unsuitable for burial purposes; so, even before the Free Church was moved to the Town of Almonte arid established there as St. John’s Presbyterian Church, many of the bodies had been removed to the Auld Kirk Cemetery. Many re-interments have been made in the Auld Kirk Cemetery from other cemeteries and from private burial grounds. Shortly after the Great Disruption of 1843 took place in Scotland, the congregation of the former Free Church cemetery became practically clear of bodies and even of grave markers; and the church itself was destroyed by fire. A Methodist cemetery opened five years earlier than the Auld Kirk Cemetery and located on the 9th Line of Ramsay about half a mile from Almonte, was found to have good burial soil only in spots. This cemetery is now seldom used, and re interments were made in the Auld Kirk Cemetery. On the 10th Line of Ramsay is the cemetery of the McDonald family and their near relatives, which is used as necessity arises; and in the fence corners of farms here and there are still to be seen a few headstones marking the sites of private burial grounds from which the bodies have been removed. Some have been removed from the Clayton cemetery also and re-interred at the Auld Kirk. In 1913 the members of the Cemetery Committee, of which Mr. Peter McCallum, Mayor of Almonte, was chairman signed a joint note to raise funds to build a mortuary chamber in the Auld Kirk. A portion of the interior was walled off with cement and roofed in steel and cement; and the inside was fitted with racks to hold thirty or forty bodies. As the vault fees are so arranged that vaulting and burying amount to no more than winter burial, few interments are made now-a-days during the winter.
To the right of the Auld Kirk is a row of single plots which contain the graves of ministers or their relatives. The first of these is that of Rev. John Macmorine, D.D., the second minister in succession to Rev. John Fairbairn. Doctor Macmorine had two sons who became clergymen in the Anglican Church—the lateRev. J. K. Macmorine of Kingston,and Samuel of: Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. Rev. Robert Shields of the Reformed Presbyterian Church occupies the next, plot, along with a child of Rev. Dr. A. S. Grant, of Toronto. Then comes Rev. John Bennett D.D., father of the late Walter Bennett of the staff of the Toronto Telegram, and of George Bennett of Ottawa. Next to Dr. Bennett of St. Andrew’s Church lies Rev. William McKenzie of St. John’s Church, Almonte, father of the world-famous sculptor, R. Tait McKenzie, who has one of his studios a few miles north of the Cemetery. (Mill of Kintail)
The First Teacher in Ramsay in the south-west section of the Cemetery is the grave of the first schoolteacher in Ramsay, over whose remains is a headstone erected by his students bearing the inscription: “John Gillan, bom 1777, died 1854. A native of Aberdeen, Scotland, who taught the youth of Ramsay for upwards of 20 years.”
There are few residents of the Ramsay district whose family names are not to be found on the tombstones of the Auld Kirk Cemetery. They are all here, our relatives and our acquaintances; decrepit age and vigorous life, blooming youth and helpless infancy—all. Source: The Ottawa Journal, 20 January 1973, page 38
Please keep in mind, this instalment, and ones to follow are my interpretation only of what I have read. I drive by this cemetery often in my daily travels and look in awe always; another beautiful piece of Lanark County history. - Nancy
