52 Ancestors 2021 Week 21

#52 Ancestors 2021 - Week 21

At the Cemetery

The picturesque cemetery at Alphadale, a farming area between Alstonville and Lismore on the north coast of NSW is the resting place of many generations of Paul’s family.  The cemetery is situated opposite the former St Paul’s Anglican Church – long deconsecrated and most recently a café.  Both the church and the cemetery are on land which belonged to the Roberts family and was given by them to the church.

William and Agnes Roberts were both convicts who served their time in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) then travelled first to the goldfields of Ballarat and then to the “red gold” (cedar) country of the north coast.  Their children and their partners travelled with them and all of them settled in this part of NSW.

We discovered this cemetery several years ago when we went looking for the graves of Paul’s grandparents, Charles and Alma (nee Barrow) McCann.  We found them in a group of graves which are all connected to the family although neither Agnes nor William is here.  We believe that Agnes’ grave is on a nearby private property and think that William might have been buried in the Pioneer cemetery in Ballina. 

The earliest of the ancestors buried here is  John Johnson, (1838 – 1925) who is Paul’s 2 x great grandfather.  John’s first wife was Lavinia Roberts, eldest daughter of William and Agnes, who died in childbirth at the age of 28 and was buried in what is now the Pioneer cemetery in Ballina in 1872.

John and Lavinia’s daughter Esther (born 1860) is also buried at Alphadale.  She was married first to her cousin Charles William McCann (Paul’s great grandfather) who drowned crossing a flooded stream at Eureka and is buried in the Pioneer cemetery in North Lismore.  Esther was left pregnant with her fifth child at the age of 29.

The family legend is that John Beale McCann, Charles’ younger brother, proposed to her on the way home from the funeral.  Four months later, after the birth of Ettie, she married him.

Esther and John Beale had three children together but the first two babies died and are buried in unmarked graves in the Alphadale cemetery.  It is logical to assume that they are near their parents’ graves.

Nearby are the graves of three children of Esther and Charles.  First, the grave we originally came to find.  Paul’s grandfather Charles John McCann and his wife Alma Florence (nee Barrow).

Lavina Lofts (nee McCann 1885 -1955

Mary Ellen “Nell” Barrow (nee McCann) 1887 – 1962

Catherine, the surviving child of Esther and John’s marriage is also there., with her husband, Percy Boyce.  

Catherine Agnes Boyce, 1897 – 1972

Some of the next generation are also buried in this group of graves.  They are Ettie’s son, Eric Gordon Clough (1914-1960), and two of Catherine’s children, Eunice (Sally) Crockett (nee Boyce),  1916-1973 and John Kevin Boyce, 1918 – 1982.

Since our first visit we have made many visits to this beautiful and peaceful place, and we have found many other graves of the Roberts family and their descendants.

We have bought two plots amongst the ancestors for ourselves.  We hope that by doing this, the connection to these early families may be maintained a little longer into our grandchildren’s generation.