Let me admit I had more than a few gray hairs when I started all this but I do believe that the spread of the gray is accelerating and I'm choosing to blame a lack of clarity in records.
If you have seen the list of interred you will have read the disclaimer up top that points out that the records at times leave a LOT to be desired. I've been trying to sort out when exactly the Reilly Cemetery went out of use and the Rupert Union became the predominant graveyard for the area. I have not found direct references to anyone specifically being buried at Rupert Union before 1911 (Methodist records) or 1916 (Presbyterian records). But there are a whole bunch of headstones at RUC that predate 1911 and 1916 and too many of them I think to have been moved like the Shouldice and Shannon ones we know were moved.
The written word is intended as a permanent record for those that come after us and want to know who, what, where, when, why and how. Now I have mentioned, have I not, that the early ministers, especially the Methodist ministers, weren't big on keeping records or perhaps weren't quite so literate themselves-- the handwriting at times seems to be of hands unaccustomed to the pen so maybe the leaving out of details is a lack of literacy. Maybe the records are just plain lost, or maybe they intended to but never got around to making those wonderful records we student types hold so dear. In later years this does not really hold water. The Presbyterian ministers were university educated and tended to leave really good records of who someone was , who they were married to, maiden names of wives and mothers, dates and place of interment. If these guys can differentiate between Halls, Stevenson, Pritchard, Brooks, Copeland, Chelsea, MacLaren, Wakefield. Lascelles, Thompson, Cantley, Johnston, or Moncrieff cemeteries (there are others as well), and take the time to mention anything out of the ordinary like death by disease or carting accident, someone being buried at his farm or beside a house then surely they can differentiate between the Public Cemetery at Masham (Reilly Cemetery) and the Union Cemetery at Masham (Rupert Union Cemetery). It is only in the earliest of the Presbyterian records that a place of burial is not specified. My notes show that the Methodist ministers were far more relaxed about such details, some being better records keepers than others, but there are a lot of Methodist burials that do not list a burial place.
I went down a rabbit hole today trying to figure out just when Rupert Union Cemetery went live, as it were. Local lore has the land donated around 1900, though I haven't checked the actual records as yet (but I will in time). That doesn't mean that burials at Reilly Cemetery stopped right away-- there would have been husbands and wives who wanted to be buried with their spouses, mothers and fathers who wanted to be near their children, and children who wanted to be buried near their parents. I suspect that there was an overlap of a number of years. There may well have been a requirement to have work done at the RUC site before it went into use, again it is said that the Johnston farmstead had to be cleared away first (Geggie I think, can't remember which book), and given that the RUC is very much a planned cemetery, I suspect time was spent having it laid out before burials began. When thinking of the above keep in mind that oral tradition has its faults, as memory is a funny thing and in the retelling almost all stories change just a little. Oh how I wish I could lay my hands on the early records for RUC!!
So back to my gray hairs... I was transcribing some more records, well into the 1900s and still getting people listed as buried at Masham/public cemetery at Masham and not at the Union Cemetery. So I started checking the headstones to see how many people recorded as being buried after 1899 have headstones at RUC. This got frustrating pretty quickly as the records and the headstones don't match. I have a hard time believing that an educated, long serving local minister (Robert Gamble, Presbyterian minister) who has managed in all of his burials to specify which graveyard, would be unaware of the difference between the two cemeteries. I have a hard time believing that the two witnesses on each and every record would fail to know the difference. Yes they were both public cemeteries but they lie some distance apart, they look different and they had different names long before Mr Gamble retired. Similarly the Methodist minister, Mark Styan I believe, in 1911 specifies, for the first time in the records I have found to date, a burial at the Union Cemetery in Masham. I also have a burial in Rupert in 1900 with no mention of Union, so is this indicative that Masham is becoming Rupert or is it the first burial at the new cemetery? Is Rupert the new town only and did Masham keep its identity as a separate place in those early 1900s?
What do the headstones at RUC dating from the early 1900s have in common? They are made of granite by and large, only one or two are of marble. Granite, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was available from the 1850s on, but it was hard to work, expensive and very very heavy so it didn't really catch on until the 20th. (Just a note, marble does not necessarily mean old.) As I also mentioned, monuments were often erected long after the deceased was buried. Is it possible that these 2 Methodist burials that specify interment at Masham Cemetery are a case where the family assumed because of the date of death and oral tradition that their kin was at RUC? These two are both female Johnstons who married Reillys. The RUC is on former Johnston land. Reilly Cemetery was once Johnston land too and was Reilly land for 100 years. You pick, I can't make up my mind. Maybe the place of memorial and the place of interment are not one and the same.
Now back to finding the dead...I was trying to find evidence of the interred that yesterday's lazy cleric could not be bothered to give. So I found 2 Gibson headstones form 1909, a Kennedy headstone, again 1909, and headstones for 4 people for whom I have no records. I went through all the pictures online (BLESS whomever posted them, thank you!) and as is no surprise really, there are a lot of people with no headstones at all. It's a bit surprising that such late burials have no records though (1897,1896, 1899, 1906). Were these erected at a later date as well? Are they at RUC or RC?
So where does this leave me? I think I'm going bald near my part from all the head scratching. If I follow my own rules I have to give preeminence to the records made at the time. This would tend to indicate that Mr Gamble never buried anyone at RUC (it's his successor who lists the first Presbyterian burial at RUC in 1916) and that there are a lot more people buried at Reilly Cemetery than we thought. Then again this would bring the ratio of monuments to interred into line with other cemeteries in the Gatineaus (Martin 2004). As for those without records, or with inadequate records, we will probably never know for sure. For those pre 1900 they are likely at RC, for those post 1900 who knows.
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