Located on the west side of Mill Street North, just above the John Street East intersection, the cemetery property that surrounds the Grace Anglican Church building on three sides dates from the early years of Waterdown when there was a small Anglican community, but no place of worship.

On Feb. 4, 1847, Frederick Feilde, a half-pay British army officer and his wife, Elizabeth Gildart Campbell, donated a two-acre parcel of land to Rev. John Strachan, Lord Bishop of Toronto and his successors, on the condition that the land be used for a church building, rectory and cemetery.

The original deed, written on parchment, is still held in the vault of the Synod Office in Hamilton.

The family came to Waterdown during the 1830s, following Captain Feilde’s distinguished military career that included action at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, and later the same year at Waterloo. On arrival, they lived in a log house, later moving to a two-storey frame home located on present day Hamilton Street North, with their property stretching eastwards to Mill Street.

Like other members of the Anglican community in the village, the family attended services at St. Luke’s, Wellington Square or St. John’s, Nelson Township.

The death of the Feildes’s youngest child, Alexina Campbell, on Sept. 10, 1846 and her burial on their Waterdown property may have been the reason for the donation of land to the Toronto diocese. Alexina’s small white marker can still be seen, close to a larger monument commemorating her parents and some of the other children, on the north side of the rear walkway to the church.

Despite the gift of land, another decade passed before the Toronto dioceses built a small stone English-style church that opened in 1860.

Some of the very early marble stone markers are still visible in the cemetery: Jessie Nickolson 1847-1849, Jeffrey Costin in 1858, followed in the early 1860s with burials of Gallagher and Elderkin children. Over 300 markers, with the names of many Anglican families – Eager, Vance, Nicholson, Gallin and Truesdell – can be found, as well as a number of monuments to young men from the township who served in the First and Second World Wars.

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, 12 February 2015.