Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

Situated on Chemin du Lac, near Vale Perkins, this very old cemetery is no longer in use.  It dates from 1845 with the burial of Samuel Perkins, who died February 4, 1845.  The cemetery receives its name from Gardner B. Jones (1818-1886), then the proprietor of the land on which it is located.  Members of the Hand, Geer, Magoon, Gardner, Jewett, Wheelock, Brown, Gordon, and Jones families are buried in this small cemetery.  Others of the early Perkins family are also interred here.

The winter of 1863 was a difficult one, which brought tragedy of the most unbearable kind to the small community of Vale Perkins: Charles and Lovina Geer buried three of their children that spring.  Daughter Sarah Ann succumbed on January 5, 1863 at the age of 9.  Their son Herbert A. expired on January 22, 1863 and five days after that, on January 27, 1863, daughter Olivea died.  A similar sadness occurred in 1871, when three children of the Lewis and Ladorna LeVoy family succumbed.  These events were even more tragic because Mrs. LeVoy pre-deceased her children on April 26, 1870. 

These clusters of deaths, a stark reminder of the severe living conditions of the time, likely resulted from a contagious disease, such as smallpox, measles or scarlet fever, all of which are now easily controlled by vaccination and antibiotics undiscovered at the time.