Pengelley Family Cemetery, Pengelly Landing, Bailieboro

The Pengelley Cemetery is a small private family burial ground located on the former Pengelley homestead on the north shore of Rice Lake, near Bailieboro, Ontario. It was established in the 19th century as part of the estate of Captain Robert Lamport Pengelley, a retired Royal Navy officer who settled in the area after arriving in Upper Canada in 1832. Pengelley was among a group of half-pay officers granted land in the region, but unlike many of his contemporaries, he resided on and actively developed his property, contributing to early agricultural settlement in South Monaghan Township.

The cemetery contains the graves of multiple generations of the Pengelley family, beginning with Captain Pengelley’s second wife, Emily, and their children. Several burials reflect the high infant and child mortality rates typical of rural 19th-century Canada. The family’s only surviving son, Theodore Pengelley, is interred at the site along with his descendants, many of whom remained associated with the property. The cemetery remained in active family use into the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The site is also associated with Joseph Medlicott Scriven, who served as a tutor to the Pengelley family. Scriven’s fiancée, Eliza Roche, died following an illness and was buried in the family cemetery. Scriven was later buried with her, linking the site to the history of 19th-century Protestant religious life in the region.

As a private burial ground situated within a working farm landscape, the Pengelley Cemetery represents a typical example of early settler family cemeteries in rural Ontario. Its continued maintenance by descendants into the 20th century reflects long-standing patterns of land tenure, kinship, and memorial practice in the Rice Lake area.