Photographs from the
GVHS Image Bank

Pioneer Cemetery, Chelsea
GVHS 1441.004/02

St. Martin's Church
GVHS 1346/10

Cemeteries (Ownership and Maintenance of Chelsea Pioneer Cemetery; Work on Chelsea Protestant Burial Ground)

Early records refer to this site as "Churches' Cemetery," the "family ground" or "burying ground" of the Church family.

Its burial area measures some 100 by 150 feet, located in part of Lot 11, Range 9, Municipality of Chelsea. In early times this area was sometimes called "New Chelsea" and the municipal name was West Hull.

Gardner and Jared Church, Americans from New England, obtained lots to the east and west of this site in the 1820s, and subsequently members of the Church family obtained this property from John Maxwell. Members of the Chamberlin family located on its north and south boundaries and John Chamberlin's marker not only bears the earliest date, 1837, but shows that the families became linked by marriage.

The 14 monuments commemorating 31 persons represent about half of those actually laid to rest here. By the 1880s, neighbours as well as kin of the Church family were using this cemetery, but it fell into disuse in the 1920s. The Gatineau Valley Historical Society obtained the property in 1966 and it was named the Chelsea Pioneer Cemetery in 1989 when it was designated a historic site.

Richard Rowland Thompson, Boer War hero and the only Canadian recipient of the Queen's Scarf, is buried here beside his wife, Bertha Alexander. A cenotaph commemorates Chelsea's war dead from World Wars I and II, and an annual Remembrance Day service organized by the Gatineau Valley Historical Society is held here each November 11.

The following have monuments in this cemetery: