Montreal RC cemetery: Cote des Neiges

[smcarberry]

The link to an online book providing plotowners at this major Montreal Catholic cemetery from 1855 to 1887:
The first Catholic cemeteries of Montreal and a guide to the present cemetery (1887)
Author: Mondou, Siméon
Publisher: Montreal, E. Senécal
all formats http://www.archive.org/details/cihm_04668
online book http://www.archive.org/stream/cihm_0466 ... 1/mode/2up

There is an search engine, but it is not reliable in returning results although the print looks good. I recommend reading through the plotowners section which starts on p. 90, which will also allow you to see maiden names of widows and occupations of the plotowners. The widows are not cross-referenced under their maiden names. Even this listing is not entirely comprehensive because the text at p. 60 discusses a monument belonging to Daniel Tracey, not in the plotowners section. The listing does give the plot location, and a cemetery map appears at pages n.192-93.

The A surnames start on p. 90, the H surnames at p. 125, and the O surnames at p. 162. There is a place to input a page number and be taken there directly. If you do not find a target surname, also try the O section since I saw some surnames there that often appear in other records without an O (such as O'Hare and O'Halleron). Also note that each subsection created for initial consonants/vowels is not further alphabetized, so the entire section must be reviewed to see all the listings of a specific surname.

Having read the entire plotowners section and a separate section describing selected monuments, here are surnames which do NOT appear in this book:
Carberry
Connell (there are a couple of O'Connell listings)
Cunneen
Donnellan or variants
Hehir (only one O'Hare)
Joynt or variants
Lucas
Tynan or variants
Talty

The plotowners section as a whole is composed overwhelmingly of surnames found in the British Isles and not continental Europe. In fact, it seems to me that a clear majority of the names are Irish. The book does not state that a selection of plotowners' names was made. It only states that prior to 1855 the Catholics of Montreal and its suburbs used a cemetery in the St. Antoine suburb, because land for Cote des Neiges was not purchased until 1854. Also, I should note that most of the Irish names have conventional spellings with which Clare researchers are familiar, although Leddy seems to appear here as Laddy.

Elsewhere on this Forum there are messages which I posted last year on the subjects of the LDS Family Search website's
images of Montreal RC parish records and of online images of Montreal city directories. This trio of new resources, along with census records, has permitted discoveries furthering my U.S. family history research, as none of my families remained in Canada except the ones who died there (buried in individual church cemeteries, exhumed for removal to unmarked mass graves elsewhere). The next resource which I eagerly await coming online is a search engine for Montreal newspaper articles.

Sharon Carberry

[Paddy Casey]

Thanks very much for unearthing this gem, Sharon.

I quickly discovered that it can also be searched by downloading the .PDF file and punching the search arguments into the PDF reader. I immediately found quite a few Caseys that way.

Paddy