Hansford Gravestones & Memories Preserved

The Mattinson Hansford Cemetery Society has been working steadily for over twenty years to restore an abandoned cemetery, where the first settlers of the area were laid to rest.

With advice and funding from the W.B. Wells Heritage Foundation, the society began work in earnest in 2016 to secure a deed to the land, carefully clear the overgrown graveyard of the trees and bushes, while searching for delicate gravestones that had long since fallen over, some cracked and crumbled, others in remarkably good shape. Support from the Athol Forestry Cooperative and Woodpecker Treecare Ltd. was essential in properly uncovering the cemetery. Keith Elliot Stone was tapped to handle the cleaning and repositioning of the headstones.

While the Mattinson Family presence on Hansford Road goes back to the building of their homestead in 1830, other family names easily recognizable to our area are found: Irving; Ryan; Peers; Knight; Lockhart; Dotten; McKenzie; Cooke. Another person buried in this cemetery represents one of the many eastern European immigrants to the Hansford area: Kristina Strojsa, whose family found their way to Hansford by way of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Society President Jill Mattinson says the group received strong support from the community, highlighting the late Eleanor Crowley, and Linda Cloney — members of the Oxford Historical Society — for their contributions. Mattinson says that during the society’s many working meetings in Oxford, the Parkview Restaurant was “our second home.” In a January, 2021 article by the CBC, Mattinson reflected on the emotional connection she has with this cemetery:

“It’s just magical,” she said. “The thing that struck me one day — and some days I’m reduced to tears, but not always —was standing by our great-grandfather’s stone and realizing that our grandfather … may have stood there in that very spot.”

The Society’s project for this winter is to refurbish  the plaques and stands for the illegible stones. Donations for the ongoing upkeep and improvements to the Mattinson Hansford Cemetery can be made on the society’s webpage.

Projects like this one are cropping up all over Nova Scotia and there is no shortage of work. The Facebook group “Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia“, with over ten-thousand members, is a popular place for engagement among those who hope to preserve cemeteries large and small across the province. Photographer / Author Steve Skafte is the Administrator for that group — he’s been on a personal mission to identify abandoned cemeteries, mapping them online for others to discover, and perhaps care for again.

The Mattinson Hansford Cemetery website is available here: https://www.mattinsoncemetery.org

Related:

“Nova Scotia’s pioneer cemeteries are disappearing, but not without a fight,” The Globe & Mail, 7 January 2024

Cemeteries and Monuments Protection Act of Nova Scotia (1998; Amended 2021)

“Gone and forgotten: The history buried in Nova Scotia’s abandoned cemeteries,” Global News, 24 October 2021

“Photographer on quest to save Nova Scotia’s abandoned cemeteries,” CBC News, 9 January 2021