About 1990, the
four cemetery committees, of the Catholic parishes of St. Anne’s, St.
John’s, Holy Cross and St. Leo’s, combined to form one cemetery
committee for the Catholic parishes of Glace Bay. Over the last fifteen
years the committee worked very hard to organize and correct mistakes and
confirm burials in the Roman Catholic Cemetery on Wallace Road, Glace
Bay. Any burial that is marked surname – “unknown” has
a burial there but no information is available. In section 8 you will
notice lot with a surname and no given name. These lots are sold, but the
persons are living.
St. John’s cemetery
is the lower half of the cemetery. It consists of section A, B, C, &
D.
St. Anne’s is the upper part of
the cemetery towards Main St. It is made up of sections, 01; 1; 02; 2; 03; 3;
4; 5; 6; and 7. Section 8 is the first section of the combined
Roman Catholic cemetery. (See map).
I
have also added a section for unknown burial sites for both St.
Anne’s and St. John’s. These deaths were taken from the
books, “Obituaries From the Sydney Post Record” 1933-1938;
1939-1944; 1945-1950; and 1951-1956.
These
wonderful books were published by the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia between the
years 2002 and 2005. We are indebted to the diligent work of Wayne
Macvicar of Mira who compiled all the data for these four volumes.
Because of his efforts, we how have the deaths of about 400 persons of
whom we didn’t have records.
In
this database, the SPR in the remarks column, refer to an obituary or a death
notice in the Sydney Post Record. I have randomly checked some of the
death notices and obituaries against the information we have, and they are
very accurate.
These
books can be purchased by contacting the Genealogical Association of Nova
Scotia, P.O. Box 641 Halifax, N.S.
B3J 2T3.
The Cemetery Committee
representatives of the parishes who worked on this project are: St.
Anne’s - Archie MacDonald, Camilla Campbell; Richard Young; Gerald
O’Neill; Mary Gallant; Carol Wadden; Rosella Carroll; Gualbert
Hanrahan and Lillian MacKinnon; St. Leo’s & St..John’s
– John A. MacDougall; Paul MacKinnon and Johnnie Hector MacNeil; Holy
Cross – Alex Wujcik; Teddy MacSween; Bernie Verbeski; Steve MacMullin,
Caretaker.
Data
was collected from the parish records, families; newspapers; headstone and
funeral homes. In many case, what we have as the death date might
actually be the burial date. Often in the church records burial dates were
recorded instead of death dates.
If
anyone finds any errors or omissions in this database, you can contact
The cemetery committee or myself,
Maureen McNeil at (902) 849-2880 or e-mail me at: ed.mcneil@ns.sympatico.ca
Again,
I would like to thank, all the members of the cemetery committees who worked on
this project over the years, Father Douglas Murphy who agreed to have this
material put online and to Wayne Macvicar who worked toward keeping the memory
of our ancestors alive.
Thanks everyone for your help!
Maureen Burton McNeil
Glace Bay, N.S.
Dec.10,2005