Reston Cemetery Stories

My summer 2020 project was to photograph and record the gravestones at Reston Cemetery on the Find a Grave website.  I was amazed to find over 1400 names remembered in stone there and no doubt many more are buried without a stone as well.  Some engraving is almost illegible with time but luckily the right light and the list in the Sequel to Trails along the Pipestone helped complete the task. Historical birth, marriage and death records in Manitoba can be found on this website and were helpful to fill in relationships and unreadable names and dates too. Find a Grave uses the GPS technology in the photo to help locate the plot in the cemetery. With a free membership, anyone can add photos of the people to their memorial.  

A lease was drawn on the NE 16-7-27 on September 14, 1897 and the title of the cemetery was formally registered in 1901.  Apparently, early records were destroyed in a fire on the east side of main street in 1916.   Some of the earliest stones are from 1894 and the first Boulton connection to this cemetery is mentioned in a previous post here.  Anne Mossop, Jane McAulay and the Blackmore babies were among the first burials. The many infant graves remind us about the high infant mortality before the luxury of vaccinations and health care that we enjoy now.   

Kinsley Baird, Clayburn Dickie and twins Martha Delia & Albert Edward Pickard  along with so many more children’s names will live on in their stone markers. The delicate white stone used seems to have suffered the most weathering.   

Mrs. A. Milliken

The story of Mrs. A. Milliken came together with the help of one of her kin,  Marilee.  It struck my 2020 self to be so wrong to be remembered on a stone by your husband's name.  We found her identity to be Jean Isabella (nee Douglas) but I have come to realize she was likely very proud to be known as the widow of Alex Milliken.  After the early death of her husband, she and her son William came from Scotland to Canada in 1904 to make a home with their Milliken relatives. James and Peter Milliken and their wives were early pioneers of the district and were responsible for the name Reston being given to our community after their home in Scotland. Find a Grave makes it able to reunite the family on her memorial page even though her husband was buried in England and her only son in BC. 

Veterans Graves 

Several white rectangular military stones mark the resting places of war veterans buried although many more are buried with regular stones.  Reston Cemetery is counted among the Canadian War Grave Commission sites as one active serviceman at his death is buried here.  Thomas Wilson Guthrie died in October of 1918 on his way to fight overseas.  He met his fate at age 26 in Quebec of influenza, a victim of the Spanish Flu. 

Reston boys buried overseas were able to be  linked to their family in Reston Cemetery as is the case with Melvyn Brandon, E. E. Smith, Eric Holton and Rayment Pigg. I will continue to work on this part of the project as I am sure there are many more. 

Arthur Owen Davies

Gravestones usually supply the birth and death dates with a dash between them. It is the dash that is left out of the story but this stone intrigued me to find out more. Arthur Owen Davis was born December 29, 1867 at Wigan, Lancashire in England. He is buried in Reston Cemetery after his death on March 15, 1902 at Antler, Assiniboia in the Territories. (This was three years before Saskatchewan was created as a province.) The amazing thing about this stone is that it tells his manner of death. Arthur was unfortunate enough to die a snow storm near Antler. I can only guess that he was highly thought of to have this memorial erected to him. Inscriptions are common on the older stones and this one includes "Thy Will Be Done".

March 19, 1902 clipping from the Calgary Herald with more details :  

Reston, Man., March 19. Word has been brought in from Antler that Section Foreman Arthur L. Davis, who was lost in the blizzard of Saturday last in trying to reach his farm boarding house from Stimson's store, has not been found. All hopes of finding him alive have been abandoned, a large search party being unable to ascertain his whereabouts to a late hour last night. 

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March 19, 2022 Update (Yes, exactly 120 years to the date after the clipping!) I was contacted today with a link on Find a Grave to the resting place of Arthur's parents Reverend John and Mary Davies in Greenfield, England.  

Link here  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/190684322/john-davies . Their stone is engraved with almost exactly the same inscription in remembrance of their son which leads me to believe it was them that had it erected here. I don't believe this was a coincidence but reminds me why I do what I do.  💗 

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Ellen Guthrie Bulloch wrote The Pioneers of the Pipestone that you can access online here in 1929 and sold copies as a fundraiser for the cemetery. Complaints of the disgraceful state of the grounds had been heard in the early 20’s.  The cause was taken up by local service groups and the situation improved. Spruce trees from Riding Mountain were planted in 1932-33. Today the grounds at Reston Cemetery are under the care of a board and meticulously kept by Ken Moore.  This care conveys the respect due the pioneers and those gone before who made our corner of Manitoba the wonderful place it is. 

Further information and corrections are always welcome to ssimms@escape.ca