The Grey Highlands Museum and Heritage Advisory Committee is working towards turning the remnants of a local cemetery into a national black history site.
The Old Durham Road Black Pioneer Cemetery sits on Grey Road 4 just outside of Priceville, and is currently home to a monument that displays four salvaged headstones from the cemetery of the former Black pioneer settlement.
“Priceville was part of the Underground Railroad,” said committee vice-chair Nancy Matthews. “It was on the way to Owen Sound, which was a terminus, and a lot of people just dropped off at Priceville.”
The cemetery dates back to the 1840s, when an estimated 16 Black families claimed lots and settled along Durham Road. The families used the corner of a 50-acre lot to bury their dead, which is where the cemetery sits today.
According to the 1851 census, nearly every 50-acre lot along Durham Road was settled by a Black family whose parents were born in the USA.
The cemetery was sold as part of farmland and the site was ploughed into a potato field in the 1930s.
In 1989, the four headstones making up the current monument were recovered from a pile of discarded rocks in the field, after descendants of the farmer gave a local committee permission to recover whatever they could of the cemetery.
In 2021, Grey County put forth a controversial offer to purchase the lands north of the cemetery site for use as a roads depot, which it has since withdrawn and issued an apology for.
“We are publicly expressing our opposition to another episode involving the devaluing of the importance of, not only a cemetery burial grounds, but also to the lack of compassion and consideration for the direct descendants and the supportive community that has worked so hard to restore, maintain and promote this lost piece of history,” stated curator/co-owner of the Sheffield Park Black History and Cultural Museum, Carolynn Wilson, at the time.
The committee voted in favour of beginning the application process to the National Trust for Canada to see the site preserved as a national historic site.
“The thought would be that maybe it could become more of a walking site, a black history interpretive site, [with] more pictures, more information,” Matthews said.
Since the lands are municipally owned, council will need to authorize the Heritage Grey Highlands request to apply in a later council meeting.
Matthews said she submitted an application to the National Trust several years ago, but that it was turned down for not meeting the criteria of a cemetery.
“Unbeknownst to myself, I made an error because we called it a cemetery,” Matthews said. “We were refused because it's not the kind of cemetery that they designate, [such as] huge cemeteries like St. James in Toronto that have monuments and important people and stuff like that.
“They didn't see it as worthy enough to be a National Trust cemetery. However, I believe it's worthy to be a National Trust Black history site.”
Councillor Cathy Little suggested that a multi-organizational effort might bring the goal to fruition.
“We did proclaim Black History Month and we had some discussion then about working with the county, working with [Grey Roots Museum & Archive]” she said. “There's momentum here – we don't have to work independently. We may be able to work collectively.”
