Hidden in the beautiful landscape before you, is Chapel Hill Cemetery, one of twenty cemeteries scattered throughout Potton.
Most of these cemeteries are now abandoned or almost gone. They are often found in quiet, rural corners of the township, sometimes hidden in a meadow or at the edge of a wooded area. Eleven of these ‘’lost’’ cemeteries are the family plots of our first residents, located, it seems, on private land, a practice more common in English Quebec. Catholics, on the other hand, preferred community burial sites, usually located within the consecrated precincts of the parish church.
Some of the cemeteries you will see as you travel through the township have only a few shaky, weathered headstones, such as Province Hill Cemetery, one of the most beautiful in the township. In Dunkin's Ruiter Settlement Cemetery, Potton's oldest, the headstones evoke the history of the hamlet and the families who lived there, such as the Ruiters, Elkins, Barnetts or Aikens. And they evoke emotion, like the stone of little Jacob Ruiter, 2 years old, who died of smallpox in 1797. How can we not feel the pain of the parents, Hendrick Ruiter and Catherine Friot, or that of Arthur Herbert Ruiter who buried, a little further on, his wife Eva Courser, who died too young at the age of 24?
Chapel Hill Cemetery, which dates back to 1840, owes its name to a small chapel that stood nearby, the Union Meeting House. Built in 1844, the now defunct chapel served as a school, a place of worship and a meeting place for the Potton Female Benevolent Society, the first such women's charitable organization in Canada. Founded in 1826, this women's association assisted indigent families, consoled widows, encouraged schooling for children and supported religious fervour in Potton.
Some of these women lived in Meigs' Corner, a hamlet located more than a mile south of Chapel Hill Cemetery along Route 243. This small farming community of American settlers, such as the Garlands, Coits, Miltimores and Meigs, formed one of the first hamlets in the township. It was the site of Potton's first school, built in 1809, as well as a distillery.
Meigs' Corner, like the hamlets of Province Hill and Leadville, no longer exists. Only their cemeteries remain, discreet vestiges of their passage in the history of Potton.