The Antler Cemetery is pretty well marked. There are however a few graves that have no stones or markers of any kind but, I think, they are possibly on a map somewhere. There are some graves over on the west side and of them, there are several that have no indication of who they might be. In the far corner is a grave of Mr. Abe Ramsey. Why he was buried over there is unknown unless it was because the village buried him. Howe'ver, he does have a monument. Mr. Ramsey was one of the pioneer settlers in this farming district, which later became Ben Borreson's farm. It is now in the hands of some of the Poirier family. Mr. Ramsey's wife was sent to Ontario for burial (I believe) which was long before he passed away. In the same corner is a stone for a Mr. Silk and there is no mention of his wife either. Why he was over there, I don't know. The Silk's farmed south of Antler. The farm was later worked by a man named Bob Ewing who was a son-in-law of the Silks. The land now also belongs to the Poirier family.
Next, we come to a grave for a man named Harry Mortimer who was buried years and years ago. Mortimer had a butcher shop in the village way back about 1900. He had a horse and buggy and used to go out to buy a beast from some local farmer. However, he was subject to epileptic seizures and my dad, who was a young boy at the time, told me that Mortimer would have him go with him in the event he might take on of these fits while driving. Then, in the sam erow is a grave for a Mr. Chris Leist who lived in the village. Two of his daughters lived in the area - Emma (Mrs. Tom Kennedy) and Augusta (Mrs. Walter Dittmer). One nice mild day in March, about 1920, Chris hooked up his horse to a stoneboat and struck off for Kennedy's - about 3 miles south. There were no roads at that time of course and a snow storm suddenly came up out of nowhere. Leist got lost in the blizzard and they found him the next day frozen .
Also buried along there was an Englishman who worked for George Church. Church lived north along a creek and this guy apparently went swimming alone one day (something he'd done many times before) and he drowned. He had no relatives and was a newcomer so there were no friends either. I remember we had hired a girl, Lucy Rondache, to help my mother who was not well at the time and the day of this guy's funeral, Lucy made it a point to go as she figured there would be few to mourn this poor stranger.
Another such grave along that same side of the graveyard was a chap who worked on the section gang and when they were out on the track one day, the noon train was just coming and the fellow ran and lay his head over the track. Needless to say, that finished him! I think his name was Mike. Further down the line were the Whitmores, Rueben and his wife. It is alleged that she poisoned him and then took her own life. One of the earlier and more humerous cases of Dr. Mather, who had just returned to Antler was attached to this tragedy. The night of the deaths, it was required that someone stay at the house so my Uncle George Leverton and Adam McCallum agreed to house-sit. Now, Adam was a little Irish man, very nervous and high strung who had recently come to this country. In the middle of the night, every noise he would hear he would say "What's That?!" and Uncle George would say, "Oh, that's just the devil playing around" - this explanation not being much comfort to Adam but, they both saw the night through.
Another character buried in this row was a guy called Alec Stacey who had been first man on the station crew for years but had retired. His so-called friends had bled him dry of money and he died a pauper. At this time Antler was a lively place with three bootleggers going strong. They helped to impoverish old Alec. At the same time our minister was a Mr. Down who was doing his utmost to run the booze sellers out of town. When Alec died they asked Mr. Down to have a short service in my grandparents old house, which was vacant, and he agreed. Lo and behold, the pall-bearers were none other than the bootleggers and the ones who'd done him wrong. It was comical when one thought about it. It was like a mafia job.
There were others buried, among them being several babies, in this row of which there are no records that were kept.
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