A Black Pioneer Cemetery: A Story of Reclamation

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About

Speaking for the dead has a particularly poignant meaning to the Old Durham Road community. The pioneer cemetery at the corner of the Old Durham Road and Grey Road 14 was not representative of the pioneers we are taught about in our school books, but was the final resting place for Black pioneers. These people came to Artemesia for a new existence, a new life, a life far away from the slavery from the south. What they found was bigotry and harassment from the white settlers that came to the region. Many families were driven from their homesteads by fear. Eventually, the burial grounds were returned to farm land.

2020 marks 30 years since the grounds were reclaimed by the community and restored as a cemetery. This community is now the keeper of the stories and put faces to those buried here. While only four stones were recovered, the memories of the Black families that called the Old Durham Road home live on, with many stories yet to be discovered.

We share a few of these stories with you. A link to the video will be shared by September 25th. In the meantime you can visit the links below.

To discover more of the story, watch Speakers for the Dead. https://www.nfb.ca/film/speakers-for-the-dead.

Black History in Grey County, can be discovered through the Northern Terminus https://greyroots.com/story/northern-terminus

Links

• Speakers for the Dead nfb.ca
• Black History in Grey County greyroots.com

Organizer

Old Durham Road Pioneer Cemetery Committee

The Old Durham Road Pioneer Cemetery Committee is a group of dedicated individuals that have embraced the cause of remembering the Cemetery as the burial place of the early Black Pioneers that helped to open up and settle this land.