This is not a cemetery project. It is a local and family history project. I am seeking to understand who the people of the community were in the middle 1800's and to see how these families were related to each other. There is already an excellent web page that contains transcriptions of the grave stones. However, as you will see below, the information that I am seeking to gather goes well beyond the grave stone information.

I am not an expert on this church and cemetery. So there are probably errors here, and there is probably a lot more to know about the congregation and the history of the church and the cemetery than you will find here. But my ancestors, Solomon and Jane Butson and their children, are buried in the Columbus St. Paul's Anglican cemetery. And many close relatives are buried in the Columbus Methodist Cemetery. I visited Columbus in 1977 and took a rubbing of the stone of Solomon & Jane. Most of what I think I know came from information provided to me in 1977 but have not been there since then.

This entire project would not have been possible without the extensive work of Christine Ferguson and her son Rob Evans, both of Oshawa, to photograph every one of the stones in the cemetery, so that they could be included here. Christine is a cousin of my Gibson cousins. (Solomon Butson's son Henry's daughter Emma married John Johnston, who was the half-brother of James Gibson, the ancestor of Christine and my cousins, through his granddaughter Hilda Gibson Clapper.)

Project Database: The project has an Ancestry.com tree, which contains all of the research (expect for a couple of the first St. Pual's families) that I did for these web pages. Click here to see that tree, if you are an Ancestry.com member. Since non members cannot see the tree nor the attached documents (over 500 of them as of September 17, 2009), you can right-click here and then choose SAVE LINK AS to download the GEDCOM file of the tree as of September 17, 2009 to your computer, so that you can then import it into your family tree software program.

The Town The town of Columbus, Ontario was originally called English Corners, probably due to the concentration of so many families of English and Cornish origins who lived there and on the surrounding farms at the southeast part of Ontario County, in East Whitby Township (see 1877 atlas map below). To the south is Oshawa. Even closer to the west is Brooklin (formerly known as Winchester, north of Whitby). Two concessions to the north is the crossroads post office of Raglan (apparently called Newton in 1851), and further north along the same road is Port Perry. If you are using Google Earth, use 43°58'57.26"N and 78°54'41.17"W. Until 1852, there was no Ontario County. Prior to 1852, the townships of what became Ontario County were part of the Eastern Riding of York County. Whitby Township was split vertically in half on January 1, 1858 (under the terms of the Baldwin Act, Chapter 81, Canada Statutes, 1849), with the eastern half becoming Whitby East Township. The lot numbers from 1 to 18 became Whitby East, with the lot numbers from 19 to 36 continuing as Whitby Township. In 1974, Ontario County was dissolved and most of its townships became part of the Regional Municipality of Durham. At that time, East Whitby Township and the city of Oshawa were amalgamated into the city of Oshawa (which had officially become a city in 1924). (See the Ontario County GenWeb and the Ontario Archives page on East Whitby Township for more on this.) A very good site for historic maps of this area is the Port Perry/Scugog Heritage Gallery.

Here is an 1851 map that still shows the name as English Corners. Click on the map to see all of Whitby Township in 1851. Click here to see an 1888 map of south Ontario & Durham Counties.

The Cemetery The cemetery is located in Columbus, between the fourth and fifth houses east of Simcoe Street (43°58’58.11” N, 78°54’32.08”W on Google Earth), though it is not shown in the 1877 atlas. The Church I have no information about the church.

Other Cemeteries of Columbus

• Anglican
  Click here for my separate web page with much more information about the Columbus St. Paul's Anglican Church and Cemetery. It was established in 1835 and may have been the oldest Columbus cemetery, about a half mile west of town.
• Baptist
  The 1877 atlas clearly shows another church and cemetery, just to the west of the St. Paul's cemetery. It was at the junction of the Concession 6-7 road and the road that separates lots 18 and 19. The 1877 atlas clearly shows a cemetery there also, which is visible on Google Earth (43°58'30.85"N and 78°56'27.16"W). This was the Dryden Baptist Church of Columbus. The Ontario Cemeteries web site makes no mention of this cemetery, but Rootsweb does have a Dryden Baptist Cemetery web page, with information about where to purchase a book of transcriptions of the cemetery. The church apparently received the name Dryden from John Dryden, who was born at Brooklin in 1840 (when it was still called Winchester) and is buried at the church. On the map above, he is shown owning land a short distance west of the church, and the land immediately north of the church is owned by James Dryden. John Dryden served in several significant governmental roles.
• Bible Christian
  Rootsweb shows the Columbus Bible Christian cemetery at the west edge of town. It is on the south side of Columbus Road (the old road that separates Concessions 6 and 7), just west of the large building and two houses west of Simcoe Street (43°58'54.94"N, 78°54'45.60"W on Google Earth). It is not on the Ontario Cemeteries web site, nor does it appear in the 1877 atlas. But there is a Rootsweb web page to order a transcription book. According to a Whitby Public Library web page, Frederick William Browne who was born one mile northwest of Columbus in 1870, restored the Columbus Bible Christian cemetery in 1946.
• Presbyterian
  The Whitby Public Library has a web page on Rev. Robert Hill Thornton. It states that he founded a Presbyterian church at Columbus, with no date given. An Ajax-Pickering web page states that he had had the small congregation at Columbus for two years at the time of the Mackenzie Rebellion (1837). I have found no mention of where the members of this church were buried. I have found no web site that mentions a Presbyterian cemetery at or near Columbus. Another Ajax-Pickering web page quotes "Past Years in Pickering" that his central church was at "Thornton's Crossroads" and that, from that base, he served people in Columbus, Brooklin, Claremont, Brougham, Pickering and Dunbarton. In 1837, he built a church on the site of Union Cemetery (Oshawa) on the Kingston Road, which is where he is buried and where Presbyterians from Columbus may likely have chosen to be buried.

Clearly the Cornish names in the Methodist cemetery and the Cornish (specifically Luxulyan) origin of the Bible Christian church and the proximity of the Baptist church are also of great significance for the overall project that I have in mind. Nevertheless, I am all too finite in my resources, and I have to start somewhere. So I am beginning this in-depth study with the St. Pauls's Anglican Cemetery and the Columbus Methodist Cemetery page is currently only receiving updates when a Columbus St. Paul's Anglican family has connections to a Columbus Methodist burial. And even there, I will focus on the Cornish families from 1830-1860.

Where They Lived

Here is an 1877 map that shows the town and the location of the St. Paul's Anglcian church and cemetery (inside the yellow circle). The church pictured west of that is the Dryden Baptist Church. The Methodist and Bible Christian Cemeteries were in town. The east-west road is the road that separates concessions 6 and 7. Click on the map to see the northern half of Whitby East Township and the adjoining part of Whitby Township (from the 1972 reprint). Or click here to see the entire East Whitby Township in a high resolution scan (from the original).

I am still working on the "1851" (really taken in 1852) agricultural census, which shows the lot and concession numbers of the farmers, so that I can fully establish just where the St. Paul's Anglican Cemetery families lived. They were NOT just in the Columbus area. For example, Solomon BUTSON lived on Concession 9 Lot 6, which is several miles northeast of Columbus and even further from the church and cemetery.

Censuses of 1851 and 1861

Since I do not yet know the range, I may have to add to the following. You can click on the links below to see PDF files of the original census images.

• 1851 Census of Whitby Township
  • District 1 (East half: Lots 1-18, excluding the village of Oshawa)
    • Population Census - pages 89-103 (note that each group of people requires 4 sheets on 3 pages to show all their information)
    • Agricultural Census - all of district 1 (I included the entire district, since stray entries for different concessions appear throughout)
  • District 2 (West half: from the west line east to lot 19) - I have not done any of these yet.
• 1861 Census of East Whitby Township (only the population census still exists)
  • Pages 66a - 69a

Related Web Page

"From Cornwall to Canada in 1841" is my web page about the 1841 voyage of four ships from Cornwall to Canada. The ships carried 600 Cornish people, mostly from the area of St. Blazey and nearby at St. Austell and Luxulyan. After the long narrative, at the bottom of the web page, I have information about the families and other families that came from the same area of Cornwall to the same area of Canada. For example, the Bealls came in 1840, and there are many Bealls buried in the Columbus Methodist cemetery, and the Butsons came in 1840 and are buried in the Oshawa Pioneer Garden and St. Paul's (as well as at Groveside and Port Perry and -- in the Huron Tract -- Staffa).