Annotated Sources for Lower Burial Ground and St. Paul’s Anglican Church

This section contains a list of annotated sources for the Lower Burial Ground and St. Paul’s Anglican Church. The more general articles and books on Kingston history have been omitted unless they contain a chapter or substantial part on the Lower Burial Ground or St. Paul’s Anglican Church. Compilation of the list has benefitted from the article done by Osborne and Patterson, cited below. A number of articles are available on this website – linked to individual entries. Others can be obtained at the Kingston Public Library on Johnson Street.


Anderson, Allan, J. 1963. The Anglican Churches of Kingston. Kingston: Author. Provides a capsule history of each of the Anglican churches in Kingston from the Loyalist beginnings, including a chapter on St. Paul’s Anglican Church.


Bazely, Susan M, 2005, ” ‘We All Die Sometime’ The Lost Cemeteries of Kingston: An Archaeological Perspective.” A PowerPoint presentation to the Kingston Branch of the United Empire Loyalist Association. This is the only compendium of Kingston’s pre-historic burials and historic graveyards and cemeteries.


Christianson, Paul. 2010. “The Design, Building, and Rebuilding of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Kingston, 1844-1856,” A Collection of Talks of Historical Interest, Kingston: Pittsburgh Historical Society, 7-23. An excellent architectural history of St. Paul’s that places it in the context of the broader movement for Anglican church architecture.


Diocese of Ontario (Anglican Church of Canada), Archives, Preliminary Inventory, 1980. The Diocesan archives hold the burial registers for the Lower Burial Ground that are part of the archival record for St. George’s Cathedral (pg 107) as well as the records for St. Paul’s Church (pp 131-133).


Horsey, Edwin. 1937. The Story of Cataraqui, Fort Frontenac, Kingston. Kingston: Unpublished Manuscript. Horsey was a long-time Kingston resident and compiler of information on the history of Kingston. One of the chapters in his unpublished manuscript (copies at Queen’s University Library and Kingston Public Library) is titled “St. Paul’s Old Graveyard”. This chapter contains a very interesting description of the graveyard from the early 1900s, as well as a list of the stones that Horsey was able to read in 1934.


Long, Lieut. Col. Charles E. 1937. A Sketchy History of St. Paul’s Church, Kingston Ontario, 1845: A Memorial Church. Kingston. Although titled as a history of the church, it is almost exclusively a listing of the burials as based on the stones that were extant in 1937. It was subsequently printed in Historic Kingston with some corrections – see the following entry.

Long, Charles E. (rev. Margaret Angus and Richard Preston), 1955. “A Sketchy History of St. Paul’s Church, Kingston Ontario, 1845,” Historic Kingston, Vol. 4, 40-46. The Kingston Historical Society published Long’s 1937 Sketchy History of St. Paul’s Church (listed above) with some corrections by Angus and Preston.


McKendry, Jennifer. 2003. Into the Silent Land: Historic Cemeteries and Graveyards in Ontario. Kingston: Author. This book provides an Ontario-wide comparative study of cemetery design and architecture as well as grave markers and their imagery. It examines the continuum for cemeteries and graveyards and their markers into which the Lower Burial Ground fits.


Ontario Genealogical Society (Kingston Branch). 1992. Burials in St. Paul’s (Anglican) Churchyard, Kingston, Ontario: Interment Records and Monumental Transcriptions. Kingston: Kingston Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society. This book provides an alphabetized list of the burials in the Lower Burial Ground, including the date of interment. This list was taken from the burial register in the Diocese of Ontario archives which was also used to compile the list of burials for this website.


Osborne, Brian S. 2004. The Rock and the Sword: A History of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kingston, Ontario. Kingston: Heinrich Heine Press. In addition to a first-class church history, Osborne provides a very interesting summary of the problems that the Presbyterians had in burying their dead and the clash with the Anglican church over burials in the Lower Burial Ground in 1824 and 1825. Ultimately this resulted in the establishment of a Presbyterian section of the Upper Burial Ground in 1825.

Osborne, Brian S. and Patterson, William J. 2015. “Kingston’s Lower Burial Ground, St. George’s Graveyard, St. Paul’s Cemetery: 232 Years of Continuity,” manuscript on file with the Lower Burial Ground Restoration Society. This paper was originally prepared in 2008 following the establishment of the Lower Burial Ground Restoration Society. In addition to a brief history of the site, it provides information on the site’s heritage significance, both tangible and intangible. The 2015 update was done following a more in-depth analysis of the burial register.


Patterson, William J. 2004. “A Matter of Grave Concern: A History of Kingston’s First Cemeteries,” A Collection of Talks of Historical Interest, Kingston: Pittsburgh Historical Society, 21-26.

Patterson, William J. 2014. “Dead no more: the Lower Burial Ground Restoration Society uses historical research and reflective transformation imaging to “resurrect” Kingston’s first and Ontario’s oldest cemetery after 150 years of inactivity,” a paper presented to the Pittsburgh Historical Society on 25 March 2014. This is an excellent paper tracing the history of the Lower Burial Ground from 1783 to 1864. He completes the paper with an outline of the work done in the 20th century by interested parties and by the Lower Burial Ground Restoration Society beginning in 2008 to ensure the conservation of the built heritage resources associated with the burial ground.

Patterson, William J. – The History of Kingston’s Oldest Burial Ground, September 2015.  Patterson’s paper contains an excellent history of the Lower Burial Ground.  It has extensive information on the 1825 Committee of Enquiry that was established to demonstrate that the Lower Burial Ground was set aside for the use of the inhabitants of Kingston under the control of the Anglican church.


Preston, Richard A. 1959. Kingston Before the War of 1812. Toronto: The Champlain Society/University of Toronto Press. This book is a compilation of the documents relating to Kingston’s early British history from the arrival of the Loyalists in 1783-84 to the start of the War of 1812. Preston has a section on “Religion and Education” that provides some context the establishment of the burial ground. There is one document that relates specifically to the Lower Burial Ground and the construction of the wall by François X. Rochleau.

Preston, Richard A. 1956. “A Clash in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” Historic Kingston, No. 5, 30-44. In this paper Preston deals with the difficulties that the Presbyterians had in trying to use the Lower Burial Ground for the burial of their dead in the 1820s, ultimately leading to the establishment of a Presbyterian section in the Upper Burial Ground in 1825.There is one document that relates specifically to the Lower Burial Ground and the construction of the wall by Franҫois X. Rochleau.


Young, A.H. (ed.) 1921. The Parish Register of Kingston, Upper Canada 1785-1811, Kingston. This is a printed copy of the parish register of the Reverend John Stuart, the first missionary of the Church of England in the area now known as Ontario, covering the years 1785 to 1811. In addition to a list of the burials in the Lower Burial Ground, it includes baptisms and marriages and extensive information on the early history of what became St. George’s Cathedral. The text of Young’s book is available on the internetSee also Part 2.