Mary Ann

The name caught my eye. 

Mary Ann

It was at the top of the old headstone in raised letters. I looked down the stone and saw that she was 23 when she died in 1852, the wife of David Campbell.

Beneath her name was that of a young child, William, of the same man. Was he her child too? What was his cause of death? How did she die at such an early age? Something as simple as a toothache could have been the cause of death. Infections were deadly as were many of the diseases which antibiotics and vaccinations control today. Of course childbirth was a common cause of death for young women.

Did she leave any children giving her descendants who know of or search for her today? I wonder if, like my Mary Ann, she has a great granddaughter who wonders about her?

Mary Ann Pretty died in 1908 of tuberculosis, which had taken her husband and two children previously. Over the next several years, four more would succumb to the deadly disease. Only three children survived, one of whom was my grandfather.

It is interesting to see the name of David Campbell so prominently displayed on this headstone though he is not buried in that spot. Maybe he married again and is interred with another wife. Mary Ann Campbell’s family has interesting items to research.

Can you tell I am knee deep in genealogy these days?

Ghosts

They dot the countryside, these old buildings, once places of congregation where people prayed and sang hymns of praise for all the big occasions in life and the times between. Now they are decommissioned and up for sale, some bought and repurposed, others left to disintegrate. This is possibly the fate of the old church on a country road west of our city.

It is slowly falling apart, peeling paint and rotting boards, 

without a time of service posted or even a name. There is nothing welcoming about this building. Former congregants, having passed to their eternal rest, fill the yard, the old headstones doing the best they can to stand vigil. 

Someone has placed the fallen ones to lean against the walls. On this cold day in February, as I walk around the building and through the cemetery, the silence and cold envelop me like a shroud.

This was a Presbyterian Church, the second here in Birch Hill, the congregation having outgrown the first built in 1800. This building was started in 1858. In 1925, when the United Church of Canada formed from four Protestant religions, including Presbyterian, the congregation of this church split, some joining the United Church. They built a new church in 1928, across the road from the Presbyterian building. The United Church is still in use and in good repair. 

Meanwhile the older building is crumbling.

Behind the church, among more headstones, three white birds which looked like Willow ptarmigan, flew off as I approached. We surprised each other. 

However it was not surprising but somehow fitting to see such beautiful white creatures here among the ruins.