Old Grahamsville Methodist Cemetery

Tucked away in busy suburban Brampton, beyond an old sidewalk that disappears into grass and recommends pedestrians use the other side of the street, is a cairn marking the site of the Old Grahamsville Methodist Cemetery.

Also known as the Grahamsville Wesleyan Methodist Cemetery, the Old Methodist Cemetery, Torbram Cemetery and even Hopkins School House Cemetery, this final resting place of some of Brampton’s early settlers is not easy to access. Just ask us! We were yelled at to leave by a nearby business when we pulled into their parking lot and stepped out to photograph the single cairn that now marks the site. Despite an explanation that we just wanted to see the cemetery and it would take us two minutes in their non-busy parking lot and could we please park there, we were turned away and had to find a different way to access the site. (Note: We accept and understand it is a private business, but a little acknowledgement and appreciation for those settlers who opened the area for the very development that made that business possible, could go a long way.)

Never an official cemetery, the site was used as a burying ground between about 1837 and 1859, on land owned by a John Jackson. The cemetery is marked on an 1877 map of the area.

In the 1930s William Perkins Bull states that the section of land where the cemetery is was “level fertile clay, bank barn and brick house, Blind Creek on the south corner and watered by wells, with Old Grahamsville cemetery on the south corner. It is in deplorable condition – tombstone falling and fenced off by a wire fence. School Section # 24, known as Hopkins School, stood on this west half which at one time was used as a Wesleyan Methodist church, torn down about 1869.”

By 1974, there were about nine remaining tombstones. The site was “cleaned up” and the stones were removed to the City of Brampton Work Yard and a cairn was erected at the location. (One reference we found indicates the stones were buried under the cairn but we have not been able to substantiate this.)

Today, even if you can’t stop and pay homage at the site because there is nowhere to park and no accessible path to walk on, give some of Brampton’s earliest Wesleyan Methodist settlers a thought as you drive along Torbram Road just north of Steeles Avenue.