The Hamlet of Smith has absorbed various communities that were once recognized individually. Hondo, Smokey Creek, Moose Portage, were large enough at one point to warrant their own cemeteries. Smith has two, the Smith Cemetery and the Catholic Church Cemetery.
In addition, there are graves scattered through out the country side where families buried their own on their land,
Elizabeth Mutch’s grave is on of the most recognizable (See SG041). When you get to The Bison Herd (SC0036) and look into the field you will notice a cross at the rise of the field. This is the resting place of Frank Price, the maternal grandfather of the Villeneuve's, a local family.
We haven't tracked down yet why he was buried there but eventually we will. The Athabasca River Graves (SG004) are another example of a lady being buried at her home, but in this case the site was used for additional graves.
Now we are going to start a guessing game. Mirror Landing was the site of the trading posts in the early 1800’s. Because of its location at the junction of the Lesser Slave & Athabasca Rivers it seems to have been a well used stopping place. As close as we can ascertain it became more of a
‘town’ around 1906 when the steam boats came from Athabasca Landing and unloaded their freight and passengers for the portage around the Lesser Slave River Rapids. The Northern Transportation Company was formed around this time and one would assume that they had some sort of a terminal here. It was 1910 when Captain Barber moved his family and sawmill here. In 1913 when they applied for village status and to change the name to Port Cornwall there were 44 names of business men on the petition. It was a bustling little town.
It was in the early 1920’s that the Catholic Cemetery began being used. It was slightly later than that for the Smith Cemetery. Not everybody in the early years lived on a farm so would not have been buried on the home site. So the question I have been leading up to is where did they put the bodies?