John had a good idea what it was going to take, when he first stepped onto Lot 15, it was not a farm. It was a wilderness so thick that daylight barely touched the ground. “I commenced to improve on my land (it being then a perfect wilderness, travelled only by the Indian) late fall of 1834. The snow was on the trees then I recollect well, for, on beginning to chop down some trees to build my small ‘shanty’ with the snow at the stroke of the axe would be falling down upon me.

I’ve always carried this quiet belief that no one truly wants to be forgotten. Even the humblest life holds a hope; that someone, somewhere, will remember we were here. That we mattered, that our story didn’t simply dissolve into the soil, or drift away on the winds of time. It’s that belief, that has shaped me for years, but it wasn’t until recently that it became something more than a feeling. It became a responsibility. My journey into the unmarked graves of St.Marys began