Cemeteries
• Brown's Corners United Church
• Carrville
• Headford Church
• Holy Trinity
• Richmond Hill Presbyterian
• St. John's (Jefferson)
• St. Luke's
• St. Mary's
• Temperanceville Presbyterian
• Temperanceville United
• Thornhill

The Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church Cemetery is located on the west side of Yonge Street, just north of Major Mackenzie Drive, in Richmond Hill. An unusual feature of this cemetery is its octagonal vault, or dead-house, built in 1863. Octagonal buildings including houses, barns, schoolhouses and vaults were briefly popular in the mid-19th century in North America, promoted by Orson Squire Fowler of New York. Very few examples of any type remain in Ontario.

The oldest documented burial in the cemetery is that of Abner Miles, one of Richmond Hill’s founding citizens, who died in 1806, although local tradition suggests that an aboriginal Canadian was buried there prior to Miles’ interrment. The land the cemetery now occupies was originally one of several properties owned by Miles, deeded to the church by his son James Miles and eventually purchased by the church elders from James Miles’ heirs in 1840, as the younger Miles had neglected to sign the deed.

Although the cemetery is associated with the Presbyterian Church, the burials are not limited to church members. Among the notable burials in Richmond Hill Presbyterian Cemetery:

• Abner and James Miles
• Reverend William Jenkins, first Presbyterian minister from 1817 to 1843
• Reverend James Dick, Presbyterian minister from 1847 to 1877, first chairman of the Richmond Hill Public Library Association
• Benjamin Barnard, schoolmaster, who is sometimes credited with naming Richmond Hill after the song "The Lass of Richmond Hill"
• Colonel David Bridgeford, who accompanied Colonel Robert Moodie on his ill-fated ride down Yonge Street to warn the government during the 1837 Rebellion (see Holy Trinity Cemetery)
• James Langstaff and his wife Mary Ann Miller
• Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery, Richmond Hill’s most famous murder victims, buried in unmarked graves in the south-west corner of the cemetery

A complete transcription of burials at Richmond Hill Presbyterian Cemetery is available from the Ontario Genealogical Society: http://www.ogs.on.ca/publications/first.html

For views of the church and grounds, click here.

Stones

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This electronic finding aid to the cemeteries serving the population of Richmond Hill is provided courtesy of the Richmond Hill Public Library.