cemetery Dacre Memorial

Dacre Memorial Cemetery

“Jesus said… I am the way, the truth… and the life. John 14:6”

So reads the sign marking this small private cemetery on Highway 132 almost two kilometres southeast of Dacre, Ont. Dacre is a small village on the old Opeongo Road, a colonization route that broke ground from the Ottawa River through Renfrew to the west. In 1873, the village boasted two hotels and two stores. Today, it has a store and a motel.

The cemetery sits on a slight hill under two towering pines and in view of Constant Creek. It has no specific religious affiliation, but has generally provided a last resting place for Protestant families of the Dacre area while their Roman Catholic neighbors were buried three miles down the road at Mount St. Patrick.

The oldest known burial in the cemetery is that of 15-year-old John Holmes in 1857. The next people to be buried there, in 1858 and 1859, were United Empire Loyalists David Hunter and Esther Truesdale of Vermont. The Hunter family came to dominate the graveyard. William, a son of David and Esther, owned a sawmill upstream on Constant Creek. He, his wife, all four of his sons and two of his daughters are buried in the cemetery.

Dacre Memorial, on Lot 17 in Brougham Township’s Range D North, was still in use in 1987.

This cemetery record contains a map with the location of the headstones shown. It also contains headstone inscriptions.
Contact information (2021): Mrs. Laing 613-649-2690
See also Find a Grave link https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2408301/dacre-memorial-cemetery