Essonville Historic Church

“Discoveries – Essonville Line takes one back into the past and into settlers’ lives ”
by Martha Perkins

Fifty years from now, the Essonville cemetery will probably tell a different tale. Nowadays difficult births are not always life-threatening to mother and child. We haven’t had a war in 40 years and many diseases can be diagnosed and cured. But what was it like for the woman whose husband died when he was just 45, her 17-year-old son the year before that and a baby in its first year of life – there’s just one year engraved on the stone. The woman lived until she was 75. How did she bear the pain?

Then there’s the woman whose birth date is already carved on the stone, the space for the death still blank and polished. Both dates are recorded for her husband, whose lifespan is carved above hers. What does she think each time she visits the grave and wonders when she will fill that empty space beside the grave? Does this mean she’s accepted the inevitability of her own life’s end?

Peeking through the broken panes at the Anglican church across the road, you get a different sense of the past. The pew benches are made at 90-degree angles – straight-back seats for straight-laced people, though I think it had more to do with ensuring people didn’t fall asleep during the sermon (now services are held once a year to commemorate the early settlers).