The Haunting Sound of the Undertaker's Cart on the Dirt and Corduroy Roads of Pioneer Muskoka

Birch Hollow Photo by Suzanne Currie

      The Shea family and settler friends, residing in the Hamlet known as Ufford, in the Township of Watt, (present Muskoka Lakes Township), joined the sombre procession through narrow forest paths, to carry the body of the young Maria Shea to her final resting place a half day's walk southeast to the newly established Falkenburg Cemetery. The year was 1867. Roughly four years since the Shea family members began arriving in the wild frontier of Ontario settlement lands, now in the District of Muskoka. By 1867 there was little improvement in roadways and in settlement growth, Bracebridge being the closest village to the South. Doctors were few, and the isolation of these pioneer encampments made travel long and difficult, and often by foot or by dug-out canoe, or possibly a crudely fashioned rowboat.

     Maria Shea the victim of a respiratory illness, that today would be easily treated, while isolated on the family homestead,  died without having received proper medical care. She was treated with the usual home remedies and basic medicinal formulas available to settlers at the time, but it was not enough to save her life. The funeral procession was by foot through along rough cut bush trails, the casket being carried by the men of the family, arriving later in the day at the tiny hillside Falkenburg Cemetery, where a grave had been dug the previous day. It is said the family would not lower Maria's body into the grave initially because it was full of run-off water. The grave had to be emptied of its contents by borrowed pail from a neighbor, and it wasn't until much later in the day, with failing daylight, before the men, with rope, were able to carefully, slowly lower the rough box into the ground. The funeral procession, according to one account, had been followed to the cemetery by a number of wolves said to have been particularly curious about the human intrusion. It is to be expected the mourners and family had to return to Ufford and area by oil lamplight to illuminate the winding, hilly forest pathway.

     Settlers were probably quite familiar with the undertaker's cart, and the funerary wagon, being the horse-drawn hearse, that would have rattled down these same rough roadways to either recover the bodies of the deceased, or to carry a coffin to the nearest cemetery for a proper burial. It was probably quite disturbing to hear the tell-tale scuffing of the team of horses, banging hooves down on the hard pack dirt roadways, often late at night, the lamplights flickering as the cart was shaken by the pot holes and sharp curves over and around hillsides known well of the Ufford farmland, bordering Three Mile Lake. These watchers in the woods, in their roughly hewn shanties, would have been able to identify the wagon and horse traffic along their abutting laneways, and have known that someone close by, a friend of the family, or known neighbor had most likely succumbed to illness or injury; and the undertaker from Bracebridge, more than likely, had come to assist with the removal, and or late night funeral. Here's why.

     When there was a seriously contagious illness, possibly in the form of an epidemic, whether Smallpox, Influenza, Diphtheria, or other disease easily spread amongst the community, it was not uncommon for burials to be conducted shortly after death had been confirmed, and usually late in the evening or early morning, in order to efficiently remove the potential for disease spread, and held in private to avoid any mourners or curious onlookers that would have occurred during the daylight. In one case, also in the Ufford area, the Doherty family, (road of the same name today) was stricken by such an contagious infection, and four members died within a twenty-four hour period. They were buried quickly adjacent to their property, only a few meters from the well travelled roadway. There are many similar stories told, with a folkish bent, about these late night funerals, without any particular religious rites being performed before death, or any ceremony during the burial, because of the nature of the illness, and the possibility of it spreading to the grave diggers themselves. The rural residents had every reason to be fearful of these unfortunate but necessary visits, because it meant a potential outbreak was happening nearby, putting them at serious risk as well. Did they have contact with the affected neighbors in the days leading up to the news of the illnesses? Might they be next to fall seriously ill? As far as medical rescue, this was part of the homesteading catastrophe that occurred on many Muskoka homesteads in the earliest years of formative settlements, dating back to the late 1850's.

     I am frequently awestruck with the gravity of their pioneer situations, and how dangerous it was to move ill prepared families into the wild frontier lands, that were viciously hard even on those brave souls who were experienced with axes and saws before arrival here. Many lives were destroyed by this brutally difficult reality of cutting down large acreages of forest, clearing the lands of stumps and rock, and building stable and weather resistant shelters to protect against the early winters that moved in by late October, and wouldn't relent until the end of April, when the lake ice might finally release its hold. When I wander through these cemeteries where quite a few of those hale and hardy pioneers are buried, some taken by the dangerous realities of falling timbers, and broken backs, others taken by untreated injuries, cuts and food poisoning, and yet others felled by the quick spread of contagions; something we are particularly familiar with today in our world of 2021.

     I have been known to pause on my way out of these scenic, peaceful historic graveyards, for a few moments of remembrance and contemplation, the visual character, and sounds that companioned those mournful events dating from the 1860's. How much neighborhood, community and regional history transpired on this hallowed ground, in the drama of everyday life, and everyday tragedy, and everyday resolve to carry on, as God's will, and hold memories close in the march of time that will again and again involve both birth, and rejoicing, death and its resident sadness. In these cemeteries our history speaks to us, when we choose to extend a few moments of quiet contemplation about how we arrived at this place in time; and how these good folks buried within, inspired the improvements of which now all benefit. Health care comes to my mind.

     Several years ago, Suzanne, who has been working in her spare time for at least a decade, gathering together our family history, decided she really needed to know where her relative, Maria Shea was buried in the Falkenburg Cemetery. We had an inkling because of the descriptions in her uncle Bert Shea's book on the history of Ufford, and we looked at the landform of the hillside property, to determine where water run-off might have come from on the day of the young woman's burial. As we both have some reverence for the serendipity of finding graves, getting a little other worldly assistance, (from the deceased or family thereof) we made every effort to let Maria lead us to her actual plot in the small cemetery. Suzanne went to a low area not to far removed from the roadway, and where there was an obvious depression in the ground, but no visible marker to suggest there was anyone buried in this location. We had been at the cemetery for almost an hour at this point, and there hadn't been as much as a single fly flitting about. When she yelled to me, at the opposite corner of the property, that she believe the plot was just to the west of where she was standing, I watched her then take a couple of steps and call, "Maria, Maria where are you?" In a matter of seconds, she was swarmed by flying insects that were hitting her in the face and eyes, that had seemingly come out of thin air. She couldn't find anything on the ground that she could have inadvertently disturbed to send the flies skyward, but it was obvious that they were particularly fond of this one small location; literally a habitat that was the size of the grave Maria had been buried in back in 1867. Was Maria trying to let her relative, Suzanne, know that she was buried below her feet; and that she was very much deserving of a grave market to memorialize her short life? In the whole cemetery, although not very big, it was the only bit of landscape that matched the description given in the text of her uncle's community and family history. As far as being convinced that her bones were in that unmarked grave, well, funnier coincidences have occurred during her years of research and on-site adventures in historically peaceful places like this.

     Don't be shy about visiting these sanctuary locations in our region and beyond. They are wonderfully peaceful places for reflective respites; and to reconnect with our heritage without having to pay admission.