A group of researchers from Western University is working to uncover the stories of hundreds of 19th-century people buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in Ingersoll, Ontario.
About 400 bodies are believed to be buried in the large grassy area at the back of the cemetery, known as the Pauper’s Cemetery. The site is a resting place for people from marginalized groups, including immigrants and people living in poverty who could not afford a funeral or a headstone.
The students used the cemetery’s now-digitized burial register to find out the names of those buried between 1864 and 1976 and their names. They plan to build a memorial with the names of the deceased to honor them, said doctoral student Rebecca Small.
“These were people who unfortunately did not receive a gravestone because of their poverty,” she said. “With a stone monument, we want to commemorate them and give them a sense of permanence. And that is exactly what we wanted to offer them.”
The students combed through the registry and compared it with ancestry documents, census and immigration records, and military records to identify those buried in the pauper’s cemetery.
They include black Canadians who escaped slavery in the United States and Chinese immigrants who were affected by the Chinese head tax, which was later replaced by the Chinese Exclusion Act to curb immigration.
Researchers at Western University are trying to find out more about the hundreds of people buried in an unmarked gravesite at Ingersoll Rural Cemetery.
Also buried in the field are youths from the British Home Children. They were among the more than 100,000 orphaned or impoverished children who came to Canada from Britain between 1869 and the 1930s. Most worked as domestic servants or laborers and some were abused.
Small and fellow student Emily Kirk were hired as research assistants as part of a summer internship at Western University. The program is supervised by Indigenous studies professor Cody Groat. Isaac Bender, an archaeology student, is assisting them with fieldwork using ground-penetrating radar and other technologies.
Ground-penetrating radar is a noninvasive technology used by archaeologists to identify graves. Bender’s research is examining how the technology can be combined with other techniques to obtain more data about the graves, he said.
“Essentially, it’s about pushing something that looks like a stroller back and forth in rows to collect data that can show us where graves are in the ground,” Bender said.
“We need to take a multimodal approach to get a better picture of where burials are and how sure we are that these are graves and not just a tree root or a buried pipe.”
They hope that the insights gained from ground-penetrating radar can help communities in their investigations into boarding schools.
Stories represent patterns throughout history
Among the “stuffings of interesting stories” from the potter’s field, Kirk was particularly drawn to the story of Thomas George Alden, a 15-year-old British home boy who worked on farms across Oxford County but died when he was crushed in a gravel pit.
“His story really reflects the experiences of many impoverished children who were brought to Canada with no one to care for them,” Kirk said.
Small was fascinated by Ingersoll’s large black community, she said. Although many of them eventually returned to the United States or settled in other parts of Ontario for better job opportunities and a greater sense of community, their contributions played an important role in the town’s history.
The city of Ingersoll and the neighboring community of Zorra were intrigued by the project and donated $25,000 toward the memorial. The students hope it will allow the community to learn more about their predecessors.
“Just because people aren’t famous or in history books doesn’t mean they don’t have an interesting and really important story,” Small said. “The people here actually represent patterns throughout Canadian history and even their individual lives are very fascinating and moving.”
There is no timetable for the construction of the monument.
