{"id":24316,"date":"2019-07-25T11:22:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T15:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24316"},"modified":"2019-08-02T12:15:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T16:15:12","slug":"archaeological-study-shines-light-on-180-forgotten-pioneers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/archaeological-study-shines-light-on-180-forgotten-pioneers\/","title":{"rendered":"Archaeological study shines light on 180 forgotten pioneers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time has erased their story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With no formal records to go by, no one can say for\ncertain how long they had been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no next of kin to provide answers, at least as far\nas we know. Nothing to say how they lived, went to school, or what ultimately\nsealed their fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the better part of two centuries, their story has\nbeen forgotten, but a new chapter began on Monday when the remains of this\npioneer child was finally excavated from what was once a Yonge Street parking\nlot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This now anonymous youngster was the last of nearly 180\nof Aurora\u2019s earliest settlers recently unearthed by archeologists as part of\nthe process of rebuilding Aurora United Church at its historic home at the\ncorner of Yonge and Tyler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Aurora United Church (AUC) was destroyed in fire in\nApril 2014, the congregation was clear they had every intention to rebuild\ntheir spiritual home at their traditional spiritual centre, but little did they\nrealise the long road towards ground-breaking would lead to the recovery of\nnearly 200 of its earliest parishioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the foundations of the first Methodist church on\nsite were laid in 1818, the corner of Yonge and Tyler incorporated both the\nchurch itself and its associated cemetery. Over time, and as the community\ngrew, the earliest church reached capacity \u2013 as did its cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The church rebuilt and, following the last interment in\n1869, the cemetery was decommissioned and families removed the remains of their\nloved ones and reinterred them at the newly-established Aurora Cemetery in the\nsouth end of Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, so Church officials thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happened, the remains of some 80 pioneers were\nreinterred by their families but, for more reasons that have been lost to the\nsands of times, the remains of many more were left behind, their gravesites\ncovered, and their headstones removed and stacked for nearby residents to pick\nup and use as they saw fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would take tragedy to prompt the re-examination of\nthis story and, following the fire, Aurora native Emily Anson was eager to get\nher hands dirty and shed some light on our forgotten history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Anson, who grew up on Wells Street, a stone\u2019s throw\nfrom Yonge and Tyler has been the project manager on the archeological dig at\nAUC since 2017. When the opportunity came up to become involved, she jumped at\nthe chance, not fully knowing the extent of the work that lay ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first step, she says, was research. They looked into\nthe few remaining historic records \u2013 the bulk of the church\u2019s own archives\nhaving been lost in the 2014 and a previous blaze \u2013 along with newspaper\narticles, fire insurance plans and old maps just to get an idea of what might\nbe on site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once they had a general idea of where the remains of the\ncemetery might be, they plotted out the church site, boring 30 cm test pits on\na five-metre grid, wherever they thought had potential. They also cast a wider\nnet to the sites of the nearby Victorian homes that used to back onto AUC\n(bulldozed in 2015 to make way for the redevelopment of the church and\nassociated seniors residence) and performed a ground-penetrating radar study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the radar study didn\u2019t yield the results they were\nhoping for, given more than a century of infill, compression from the parking\nlot, and on-side clay deposits, the test pits were more successful \u2013 as was the\ndiscovery just below the surface of cemetery markers that, while removed, had\nleft behind stains on the soil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe began stripping the soil in 2017 and we started at\nthe south end at first and didn\u2019t find much,\u201d says Ms. Anson. \u201cBut, we started\nfinding things we weren\u2019t sure what they were, but it turns out they probably\nwere the end markers for the southern edge of the cemetery. That is when we\nstarted finding the grave shafts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process continued, stripping the soil in what she\ndescribes as \u201cmanageable sections\u201d according to archaeological guidelines set\nby the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of their concerns is you don\u2019t open too much of an\narea all at once so you\u2019re not leaving them open too long and people come and\nmess with them,\u201d she said. \u201cWe opened an area where we would have 20 \u2013 30\nshafts that we could see. Once we did that, the next step was to open one to\nconfirm the presence of human remains, at which point we called the coroner,\nthe police, the Cemetery Registrar, and we got an order of investigation to\nactually open the cemetery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce we had the paperwork, we continued to do monitored\nstripping, and then the process is once we have a shaft stripped, we would dig\ndown by hand and find a coffin. In this cemetery, almost all of the burials\nhave transverse boards over the top, an extra layer of protection. We started\nfinding those and would strip down to the boards with a shovel, clean it off with\na trowel and brushes, and remove the components of the burial in sequence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While clay deposits played havoc with their radar tests,\nthere was a silver lining there. In some cases, the clay held water and helped\npreserve the integrity of the coffin walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not every interment fared as well, but each plot revealed\nmore of Aurora\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although early Methodist burials were simple affairs, the\ngrave sites did yield some surprising results, including buttons left behind\nfrom decomposed shrouds, nails that still held fragments of fabric that once\nlined coffins and, in one case, a grave yielded two British coins, from 1820\nand 1836 respectively. Some coffin plaques, metal markers identifying who was\nburied inside each coffin, were also uncovered. The plates themselves were\nemblazoned with traditional motifs of the time like lambs, sunbursts, cherubs\nand willow trees, the elements had worn away any clues as to the names of the\ndeceased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bones, however, helped fill in the story, and paint a\npicture of a cemetery replete with not just adults, but several children, an\nindication of the era\u2019s high child mortality rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archeologists showed an uncovered bone to Brian North of\nthe AUC\u2019s Rebuilding Committee, and he says he was struck at how it was clear\nat the first sight of a spine that the individual had been riddled with\narthritis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can tell they worked really hard, and you can see\nthat on the bones,\u201d says Ms. Anson. \u201cYou can see how they developed bone spurs\nand all that stuff. These were hard-working people. They were working the land,\nand you can see that \u2013 and that, to me, is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis project is personally important to me because I\ngrew up 10 minutes from here and I remember going to bake sales and craft fairs\nin the basement of this church, walking by it every day,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt is\npretty amazing to be coming back here and sort of do right by the original\nAurorans. By doing archeology here, I hope people become more aware there is so\nmuch history in Canada and Ontario, specifically. They don\u2019t even think about\nit and this is a great way to remind people there is history beneath your feet,\nboth ancient and not so ancient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour relationships and your predecessors lived on this\nland and this was their final resting place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, each of the 180 pioneers uncovered during this\ndig are resting in a secure location and it is hoped that later this year they\nwill find a new final resting place in a new plot at the Aurora Cemetery, where\nso many other people first laid to rest at the church were moved over 130 years\nago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese remains that have been forgotten will be\nremembered as our pioneers,\u201d says Mr. North.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time has erased their story, but a new chapter has begun for some of Aurora’s earliest pioneers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/2019-07-25-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6kc","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 22:19:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}