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Submitted by Pamela Miller -

This transcription was found in her mother's papers - undated.

Old Stanhope Cemetery

"Here is something I thought might be of interest to you and

others about the Old Stanhope Cemetery. It is apparently written in

response to a "Report of the rediscovery of a small, old graveyard at

Stanhope" He writes of witnessing the procession of wagons moving coffins

from the old Stanhope Cemetery to the Brackley Point Cemetery and the

death of Robert Auld" - Pamela Miller.

Sir: I was very much interested in reading your report of the rediscovery of a small old graveyard at Stanhope, P.E.I. which truly had not been lost or forgotten, but shall I say neglected because of age. It must be at least 160 years old, although those who were buried there was not only the emigrants from Argyleshire, Scotland --- the late Harry Lauder's birthplace. (How sweetly he used to sing "Mary of Argyle"!) Besides the American fishermen you mention --- sailors who were drowned in what was called the American Storm-� there was also some of the sons and daughters of the emigrants who were born in Prince Edward Island.

It appears to me that the graveyard must have been larger than is indicated in the figures in your report. Very few now living can tell the facts. In the 1880's the people of Brackley, a party of the relatives of the first settlers, exhumed and removed a number of the caskets to the new cemetery at Brackley Point. I saw that procession of express wagons pass through Covehead on the way to Brackley Point cemetery, as a school boy, The number I can't say perhaps twenty.

The old graveyard is situated near the seashore, on a slope of Sandy beach. A low ridge of sand hills separates it from the east. Stanhope Lane is the road mentioned in your report, 200 yards west of the graveyard. I can recall the invigorating smell of the salt sea. The property was the old Bovyer homestead, later Hodgson's. I believe Robert Hodgson lived across the lane which runs from the Stanhope schoolhouse down to the sea, perhaps one-half mile.

Robert Auld, was the name of the man mentioned as having been killed in the sawmill. Auld's mill was at Covehead; there were no sawmills at Stanhope, only threshing mills. Robert Auld was wearing a woolen scarf round his neck at the time, which became entangled in two large wooden cogwheels, and he was dragged in between cogs crushing his chest.

I have always understood that Stanhope was named after the schooner which brought the emigrants here from Scotland [This is in error - it was the Fallmouth - See https://www.islandregister.com/falmouth.html] --- the Auld's, Browns, Bovyers, Fosters, Higginses, Lawsons, McCallums, McMillans, Shaws, etc. Among those buried in the first small graveyard were my grandmother, Mrs. Catherine Lawson Shaw and her two daughters Catherine and Margaret.

I am eighty-four years of age now, and so not to pretend to remember all the facts. But the information presented here is authentic s far as it goes.

I am Sir, etc.,

A former Islander.

Vancouver, BC.