HGA Cemetery Records

Description: Holy Guardian Angels Parish serves the communities of L’Ardoise, Lower L’Ardoise, West L’Ardoise, Point Michaud and Rockdale in Richmond County, Nova Scotia. Two cemeteries are associated with this parish.

The oldest cemetery is in front of the church, overlooking the sea. Very few gravestones remain.
Those buried in the old Cemetery are not included in this document. Other than infants, burials
in the old cemetery ceased in 1928.

The new cemetery is down the hill from the parish and across the road. The first burial in the
new cemetery was 22 Oct 1928. This document reflects burials through 14 Mar 2005.

Where: If you are heading north from St. Peters on Hwy 4, the new Holy Guardian Angels Cemetery is south of Hwy 4, on the north side of Route 247. The Church is north of Hwy 4, directly up a steep hill from the new cemetery.

Condition: The new cemetery is in reasonably good condition and well maintained.

Document Content: The following is a transcription of legible markers or gravestones that were in place as of 31 October 2002. In addition it contains the names of all known burials in this cemetery whether they have a marker or not. Burial information on those without gravestones or markers is derived from death and cemetery plat records of Holy Guardian Angels Parish and/or newspaper Obituary files.

Document Format: The format is Microsoft Excel, a document consisting of four columns: Family & Individual Name (presented in alphabetical order,) Birth Date, Death Date and Comments.

Columns A & B: Information in Columns A & B is an exact transcription of what appears on the marker/gravestone or, in the case of a missing marker, these columns include a transcription of what appears in the parish cemetery plat or death records and/or newspaper obituaries.

Column C: Information in Column C is an exact transcription of what appears on the marker or gravestone. Otherwise it is the actual death date recorded in the parish records, if available & identifiable. If a marker/gravestone contains two names (such as in the case of husband and wife,) but one of the individuals is believed to be alive as of March 2005, such is indicated in Column C.

Column D: Information in Column D is a composite of available information about the deceased that we were able to obtain from parish birth, marriage and death records, cemetery plat records and obituaries. This information is provided to help genealogists or historians to correctly identify the deceased.

Assumptions & Use Restrictions:

This transcription represents all the burials in this cemetery recorded in Holy Guardian Angels Death and Cemetery Plat records. In many cases gravestones were not placed. Many other markers and gravestones have been destroyed and/or removed.

Deceased husbands, wives and children are not always buried together. In fact, in many cases, they will not be found together.

The spelling of a name on a marker/gravestone may not agree with the spelling of that same person’s name in the parish records or in the individual’s obituary. This is not unusual. Spelling of both given and surnames vary considerably from record to record.

Middle initials of the deceased may, or may not, reflect the baptismal name of the individual. In many cases we found that they did not. Instead, the middle initial found on many these markers and in the parish records reflects the name of an individual’s father. This is probably due to the local custom of differentiating similarly named male children and it seems to carry forward throughout the child’s life.

The names of those who served in the Canadian military, may have two markers: one marker reflects the burial of that person and his/her military service and another marker may reflect his burial as a member of a particular family unit. These markers are generally not together. The master cemetery plat should indicate where the individual is actually buried.

The fact that two people appear on the same gravestone does not necessarily mean that they were married, nor does it mean that they are both deceased. If the transcribers have knowledge from a primary source that these two individuals were married, then the Comments section will reflect “husband of & engraved with...” And, as stated above, if one of these individuals is perceived to be alive as of March 2005, it is noted in Column D.

This document will be housed and maintained by Paul Landry on his L’Ardoise, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia web site: http://lardoise.netfirms.com/cemeteryrecords.html. It is also available via Cape Breton Genealogical & Historical Association web site: http://www.cbgha.org The transcribers will send updates and/or corrections to these two web managers as new information becomes available.

To protect the integrity of the document and to maintain a central update site, the transcribers consider this material copyright. Individuals may “copy” the cemetery document and its cover sheet for their personal use, or provide a link from their website to either of the two web sites mentioned above. However, we do not grant permission to anyone to distribute this material in print format, post electronically, or distribution by any other means without written permission.

If there are further questions about this material or its use, please contact Jeanne Belford via e-mail at jbelford@aol.com.