Nova Scotia National Historic Site #12: Old Burying Ground

I've mentioned the Old Burying Ground in a couple of blog posts already, so I figured it was about time I made an actual post on it.

Located right on the corner of Spring Garden Road and Barrington Street, in Old Town Halifax, the Old Burying Ground was the original cemetery built in 1749 at the founding of Halifax. While there are only 1200 headstones in the cemetery today, over the years some 12 000 people have been interned here. Of course, the Old Burying Ground is also the home of the impressive Welsford-Parker Monument.

An interesting fact is that all of the headstones were carved by hand using chisels and wooden mallets. Many of the original slate stones were quarried and carved around Massachusetts Bay and shipped over to Halifax before the American Revolution. The newer headstones are carved from local ironstone though, and are apparently of much lower quality because of it.

HRM Monument #28: Welsford-Parker Monument

This rare pre-Confederation war memorial was erected in 1860 to honour the memories of Major A.F. Welsford and Captain W.B.C.A. Parker from Halifax. Both Parker and Welsford perished in 1855 in an assault on the Great Redan - part of the Eastern Defenses of Sebstopol - during the Crimean War. This memorial, in the Old Burying Ground, was constructed by George Laing through public subscription and a grant from the Nova Scotia Government.

HRM Point of Interest #7: Camp Hill Cemetery

Camp Hill Cemetery is a burial ground in the heart of Halifax that was established in 1844. It was built to replace the old cemetery known as the Old Burying Ground, which still exists, that had been established nearly a century earlier in 1747. According to one long-time Haligonian I interviewed, Camp Hill Cemetery is purportedly one of the finest examples of a Victorian era cemetery in Canada.

Camp Hill Cemetery contains the graves of more than thirteen prominent historical figures, including Abraham Pineo Gesner - the inventor of kerosene - and John Taylor Wood - a Civil War Confederate Naval Officer and grandson of the nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis - as well as many others.

(The final resting place of Joseph Howe, widely considered to be the greatest Nova Scotian who ever lived. Howe was a champion of free press, responsible for Nova Scotia becoming the first British colony to secure responsible government, and Canada's first ever federal separatist.)

(Memorial to Alexander Keith - former mayor of Halifax, former president of the North British Society and founder of Alexander Keith's brewing company.)