Tuesday 22 May 2018

Taylor Cemetery

Saw this while on the way to something else on May 20, 2018. This is just off the highway in a field. When driving by I noticed four large rocks forming a square with a marker in front.


This is the marker for Taylor Cemetery. It reads as follows:

"During the inter-war period (1918 - 1939) consecutive years of crop failure, caused by drought and extreme weather, prompted the near wholesale abandonment of much of southeasterrn Alberta. This decades-long environmental disaster, made worse by isolation and economic depression, forced several thousand settlers to leave behind their land and dreams of a new life on the prairie.

For some the decision to leave meant parting with something even more dear: loved ones who had passed on, their remains buried forever in lonely, sometimes forgotten, prairie graveyards.

The graveyard, Taylor Cemetery, has existed here int the Kinnondale community since 1918. Its only identified occupant, Ms. Mary Beatrice Taylor, succumbed to tuberculosis at age 18, and was buried here, on her family's homestead. After the Taylor family moved on, their homestead continued to function as a community cemetery, and several others were buried here in the following years.

In recent times, emigration, the elements and the influence of man have all but erased the memory of the Kinnondale pioneers who were laid to rest here.

By preserving Taylor Cemetery, we honour those pioneers, and recognize the often-tragic reality of life for the first homesteaders here on the prairie." 


There are no other markers and the cemtery is outlined by rocks. This is a little east of Lomond, Alberta beside Highway 539.

7 comments:

  1. You've got an eagle eye to have spotted that!

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    1. I knew it was there from prior reading of stuff online.

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  2. Tough people living way out like that...

    The "inter-war period" was when agriculture became mechanized, the tractor replaced the animal. More could be be done in the same amount of time with less people. Add a drought & things changed.

    I wonder where the Taylors went when they left?

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    1. One of the big issues is access to water. There is lots of farming in southern Alberta in the modern age because there are lots of irrigation canals and irrigation of farm fields.

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  3. Oh my gosh, I wonder how many unknown people are buried there.

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  4. Hey BW - here's some more background from 2013 (I can't believe it was that long ago). We're still trying to determine the identities of the forgotten dead of Vulcan County...

    https://forgottenalberta.com/2013/10/10/taylor-cemetery-consecrated-set-apart-and-dedicated-forever/

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    1. Thank you. Believe it or not I have read every entry on your blog.

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