Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Having recently been exploring in the area of Keele Street near Maple, I had noticed a pioneer cemetery at Langstaff and Keele Street, I decided to stop after work and have a look at the restored markers in the old St. Stephen’s Anglican Church graveyard. The graveyard is not marked on the 1877 county atlas and so I’ve added it in, circled in orange. The two White families that we will focus on had their land just to the south of the grave site. In 1965 the grave markers were collected up and placed in a central display to prevent further deterioration of the stones. Many of them were over 100 years old at the time of the restoration.
While looking at the names and dates on the markers I noticed that there were a lot of tombstones marking the graves of people who lived less than a year. From the days of the first settlers in North America until the mid-1800s about 30% of infants did not survive their first year.
Pioneer women would have a child an average of every 26 months and 60% of them would have six or more. The average family would lose at least one child under the age of 1 year old.
Henry and Elizabeth White may have occupied the land shown as Hiram White in the county atlas. Eleanor was born to the White family in 1845 but she lived for only 3 years and 3 months before she passed away. She was buried in the St. Stephen’s Anglican Church cemetery after her passing on May 3, 1848.
Henry and Elizabeth White went on to have other children, including Anthony who was born in January of 1856. In pioneer days the common practice was to record the length of time a person lived rather than the birth and death date for them. Anthony passed away on Mar. 28, 1856 when he was only 2 months and 28 days old.
In July of 1857 the White family welcomed little William into the world. Unfortunately, William only lived for 2 months and 4 days and passed away on September 17, 1857.
Albert was born in January of 1859 and he lived for 10 months and 25 days before passing away.
Elizabeth became pregnant again, almost right away and she gave birth to Joseph about 10 months later in September of 1860. Sadly, Joseph would live for only 9 months before passing away in June of 1861.
Isaac and Elizabeth White were likely related to Henry and Elizabeth. They also buried young children in the graveyard at St. Stephen’s church. Mary C. was born in February of 1854 and passed away on July 3rd, just 5 months later.
A couple of months after this Elizabeth became pregnant again and Elizabeth Ann was born in May of 1855. Two months later she passed away on the first anniversary of the death of her sister.
An Anglican Church was built in 1838 on a plot of land donated by one of the Keffer brothers of Sherwood. The property was owned by a member of the Zion Lutheran Church, honouring a longstanding history of cooperation between the two denominations. In 1895 they built a new church on Keele Street on the north end of Maple. The prominent feature, apart from the bell tower, is the large gable on the front with a beautiful glass rosette. The church continues to serve the needs of the congregation in 2020.
Many pioneer cemeteries are filled with the small remains of infants who never had the opportunity to grow up and experience life to the fullest.
Explore the two local ghost towns: Sherwood and Maple
Google Maps Link: Langstaff Pioneer Cemetery
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Where is this at?
Kelle Street and Langstaff Road
So very sad, the infants died so early.
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Thank you very much for this article. I am researching my ancestors and I am related to both Henry and Hiram White. Hiram was Henry’s uncle. Henry’s father’s name was Henry as well. So Henry Sr and Hiram were brothers. Hiram came to York, Ontario with his family in 1796. Both Hiram and Henry, along with brother Isaac, moved to Vaughan in the early 1800’s. The marker for Lucinda Winters, was their sister. She married Jacob Winters
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I like this post with all these photos of lovely gravestones chronicling these details of pioneer heartbreak. As someone who has done quite a lot of research into ancestors, many of whom lived in Vaughan in the 19th and early 20th century, another pattern of early deaths in families, leading to heartbreak was how often women died in childbirth or shortly after, often after a number of children born in relatively few years. This left the husband with a number of small children and the difficulty of caring for them. If he married again sometimes the new wife did not want these earlier children.
So in the 1852 Census I have a 3x gt grandfather age 71, a labourer, and his wife 66, living in Thornhill in Vaughan with their youngest son 23, also a labourer. In addition, they have 4 grandchildren age 11, 9, 8 and 5 from two different families living with them. The oldest 11 is a daughter of one of this couple’s sons. Her mother had died when she was 3 and her father had remarried a year later. At the time of this 1852 census her father and his new wife had 3 more children but she, the eldest, is living with her grandparents, rather than with her father and stepmother. The younger children, all boys, are the children of one of the older couple’s daughters who had died during the birth of her 5th son in 6 years. This last son survived, but as a baby had gone to live with the family living next door to my ancestors, the grandparents. So there is the heartbreak of so many women dying early and the additional tragedy for the infant and young children left behind without their mother, often in difficult circumstances and sometimes not being wanted. And this happened much too often.