Surviving Gravestones of the Military Burial Ground

Surviving Gravestones of the Military Burial Ground. . , Created in 1794 and in use until 1863, the military cemetery in this park was once dotted with hundreds of markers. By the early 1880s, vandalism, weather and thieves had left only 35 stone, marble and wooden markers in their original locations., We know important details about those markers from a study of the cemetery completed in 1884. Their inscriptions spoke to the harsh realities of the 19th century, reminding us that not only soldiers, but also their wives and children, were buried here., When the cemetery became a public park in the 1880s, the grave markers were removed from their original locations and arranged on a terrace behind the present playground area. By the mid-1950s all of the wooden markers, and three of those made of stone, had disappeared. The remaining gravestones, most in poor condition, were laid in concrete at the foot of the War of 18 12 monument. In 2010, all 17 of the surviving stones were relocated here for their protection and interpretation. Twelve of them have been identified with certainty., Katherine , d. 1794, 15 months old, Katherine Simcoe, the seventh child of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe and Elizabeth, his wife, was born in 1793 in what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake. She died only 15 months later in the Simcoe's tent-house at the edge of the wilderness near Fort York In a letter to a friend in England, Elizabeth wrote of her daughters death:, She had been feverish two or three days cutting teeth... on Good Friday she was playing in my room in the morning, in the afternoon was seized with fits, I sat up the whole night the greatest part of which she continued to have spasms and before seven in the morning she was no more… She was the sweetest tempered pretty child imaginable, just beginning to talk and walk and the suddenness of the event you may be sure shocked me inexpressively. , , Katherine Simcoe was the first to be buried here - on Easter Monday, 1794. The following year, a small marble gravestone was sent from England and placed on her grave. It read:, Katherine Simcoe , January 16, 1793 , April 19, 1794 , Happy in the Lord, Her gravestone had disappeared by the 1850s