Southwold – Fingal Catholic – Elgin County Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society

Fingal Catholic Cemetery

Southwold Township, Elgin County, Ontario, Canada

Submitted by Pat Temple and Robert Moore
Elgin County Branch OGS
October 2007

Revised and formatted for the Internet and Mobile Devices 26 August 2017 by BCJ

Copyright by the Ontario Genealogical Society, Elgin County Branch 1999
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THE FINGAL CATHOLIC CEMETERY

Lot 20 South Talbot Road Southwold Township

Thomas McLaughlin who owned Lot 20 South of Talbot Road Southwold in July 1851 willed a three acre portion of his property “situated on higher ground adjoining Talbot Road opposite the present dwelling house of Mr. Pettit” (currently the property at 36072 Fingal Line)to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Toronto as a site for a Catholic Church and Burying Ground.

Thomas was buried on it when he died on September 1851. No church was ever built and the Diocese never registered legal title to the property that was willed to them. A parcel sixteen feet square where Thomas McLaughlin was buried was reserved as burying ground when his son William McLaughlin sold the property in 1905.

Local residents state that Thomas’ body was re-interred about 1930 in the present Fingal cemetery on Lot 21 and 22 North Talbot Road where there is a Gravestone to him. There may have been other members of family and others of the Catholic faith including some of the Brady family buried on Lot 20 as well.
The area is now being used as farm land.