Old Lumsden North (Cat Harbour) Cemetery Municipal Heritage Site

Old Lumsden North (Cat Harbour) Cemetery has been designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of Lumsden because of its historic and aesthetic value.

Old Lumsden North (Cat Harbour) Cemetery has historic value as a physical record of Lumsden’s history, the cemetery markers serving as both historic records and artifacts on the landscape. Permanent settlers were recorded in Cat Harbour - the present day community of Lumsden – in the late 1700s and early 1800s, although not in any great numbers until the mid 1800s. Those buried in Old Lumsden North (Cat Harbour) Cemetery would be the descendants of earlier settlers, as the majority of the headstones are dated post 1900. The earliest known date on a headstone is 1876. In the early 1900s the cemetery was moved from an older site on the beach due to flooding so it is possible that older markers were lost.

The cemetery is not associated with any particular religious denomination. Early settlers were mostly members of the Roman Catholic and Church of England faiths. The Methodist population grew in the mid 1800s and by the second decade of the 1900s many residents had become Jehovah’s Witnesses (the first congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Newfoundland was established in Lumsden by 1917). Members of all these faiths are laid to rest in the Old Lumsden North (Cat Harbour) Cemetery.

Old Lumsden North (Cat Harbour) Cemetery has aesthetic value due to its unique environmental setting and placement of burial plots. The cemetery is located in a grassy, partially wooded area not far from Lumsden Beach. The cemetery provides an impressive view of vast sandy beaches, sand dunes, marshes, Outer Cat Island and Inner Cat Island.