Following their purchase of the small wooden Methodist chapel located on Lot 6, Concession 8, the Carlisle area Anglican congregation renamed the building St. Paul’s Anglican Church. However, the congregation appears to have existed for only about 15 years, and was probably served by an itinerant minister. Toronto Diocese records show that the church was on a circuit that included Lowville and Nassagaweya, but not Waterdown.

The exact date of the church closure is unknown, but was possibly as early as 1875 or as late as 1888, when the congregation dispersed to Waterdown, Lowville or St. John’s in Nelson. No deed for the sale of the Anglican Church property has been found, hence the notation on maps in the Land Registry Office that no deed was ever registered. When the congregation ceased to exist, the drive shed was moved to the Carlisle intersection to serve as the original Bates & Green Garage and the church was reputedly sold and moved, possibly to the village.

Without buildings on the property, the cemetery was allowed to become overgrown. The total number of burials on the property is unknown. Long-time local residents recall the number as being between 12 and 20 stones. Those that have been located date from the years when the cemetery was owned by the Methodist congregation.

In the Spring of 1987, some members of The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society and the Hamilton Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society undertook a grid search of the lot and discovered four large, but damaged monuments and half a dozen ground support stones, all located under a thick ground cover of periwinkle and raspberry canes.

Several years after the investigation of the site, the Flamborough’s archivist located the deeds between the Trustees of the Chapel of the Canadian Wesleyan New Connexion Church and the Anglican Church at the Niagara Diocese office in Hamilton. When the deeds – sent from Toronto in the 1940s – were found, there was no church building in Carlisle at the time, and they never investigated the possibility of an abandoned cemetery existing.

One interesting part to end the story: Grace Anglican Church in Waterdown holds a fine silver communion chalice with no record to explain the church’s ownership.

Did it come from Carlisle when the church closed its doors?

Sylvia Wray is the former archivist with the Flamborough Archives. She can be reached through the Archives at archives@flamboroughhistory.com.

This article was originally published in the Flamborough Review, 4 June 2015.