Cemetery Origins

         On August 5th, 1822, Andrew Scott was granted a parcel of land that included all of (what is now) the village, north and south from the Bridge to Steeles Avenue and east & west from the river to the CPR railway tracks. Of all the members of the Beatty Group of settlers, Scott may have faired the best in the random draw for unsettled lands. There was excellent water access in the lowlands, and the lands along the top of the valley were covered in ancient White Pine forests. There was a problem, however: A Late Loyalist from Milton, Vermont had already settled on the land, dammed part of the river and was operating a mule saw in a mill on the flats.
      For reasons still unknown, Amaziah Church and his family had migrated from their land in Hawkesbury, Quebec (granted as part of the Wm. Fortune petition in 1797), to this, the most isolated part of the New Survey. One theory is that the Church family was escaping anti-American sentiment in the wake of the War of 1812. What is known, however, is that both Church and Scott were devout Methodists (though Church was Episcopal and Scott Wesleyan), and a community of Methodists quickly developed on the land.

     Farmers and original grantees in Upper Canada often created small, private family burial sites in corners of their properties, and it is likely that there are still undiscovered, unmarked graves located around Churchville. But with Churchville's population beginning to boom in the late 1820s, a more centralized, organized system was clearly required in order to sere the community. Andrew Scott donated a portion of his property, situated right near the northern border of Toronto Township, to be a non-denominational burial ground. The first recorded burial in the cemetery was Amaziah Church, in 1831, though there are likely older, unmarked graves.
    The Trustees of the Churchville Cemetery trace their origins back to the 1820s. Since its inception, the cemetery has always been managed by a group of local volunteers. 

        Amaziah Church wasn't the only member of his family who left Milton, Vermont to seek their fortune in Upper Canada. His two sisters, Mary Hyde and Orpha Blackman, both settled in Streetsville. His younger sister, Rhoda Ann (Rhody) had married their neighbor, Dr. Aner Mathews, back in Vermont and had settled in Hawkesbury near Amaziah and his family. When Dr. Mathews died, Rhoda traveled to York and met widower and prominent citizen Dr. Thomas Stoyell. He was a Late Loyalist from New York who ran one of the first breweries in Muddy York. Together they left the big city (again, possibly because of fervent anti-American sentiment in the town) and moved northwest to join Amaziah's family in the small community that was emerging around his mills. Amaziah may have also been a widower by this time and may have appreciated having family nearby.  Dr. Stoyell, having money to spend from the sale of his businesses, purchased the lands previously owned by Andrew Scott, and Church's Mills were now officially located on family land. 

Throughout the 19th Century, many of our most prominent citizens were buried in the Settler Area of the Cemetery, in what is now the Southwest section. These include many members of the Church Family, the Pointers, Ingrams, Beattys, Halls, Hardys, Bakers, Todds and Neelands. Since Meadowvale has never had a burying ground and Huttonville had the small Page's Cemetery, many individuals from the surrounding vicinity were also buried there. Eventually, in 1892, the Cemetery Board (under the leadership of President Thomas Reeve) purchased adjoining land and extended the property to it's current size. the Board hired C.J. Wheelock, who was at that time working for the new Credit Valley Railway (CPR) to survey and lay out the new purchase. To this day, the Board still uses the original survey that he produced to locate plots. You can see an image of the survey to the left. At 131 years of age, it is still in great condition.