Timaru Cemetery - A Museum Without Walls

Making a connection to someone who lived in your home could be as simple as a cemetery search on the Timaru District Councils website: timaru.govt.nz/cemetery-search

Many records have photographs of the headstones (it took a guy 9 months to take some 30,000 photos!). You can also look up row and plot numbers and location map. There are many intresting headstones out there with a history to be remembered. A wee tip as not all plots are marked with headstones, you could look up their neighbour to confirm that you are looking at the right row and plot. 

Timaru's cemetery land was set aside when Timaru was first surveyed and has developed into a very large cemetery. The first grave was Morris Clayton who was buried 16 October 1860.  Thomas Augustus Purnell was interred at Timaru Aug. 31 May 1861.  In 1863 the cemetery was fenced and the land cleared. Today the new lawn sections are not segregated, but in the past the cemetery was divided into sections. Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican, Old, cremations and the veterans section is divided into two parts with one area, by flagpole and rose garden, lined with granite headstones.  The other section has brass plaques, set on concrete at ground level, which is where, returned soldiers are buried. Children's and stillborns sections are quite recent when compared with the old section. Apparently there's a green section that was used for burying stillborns up until the early 1980s or so that's unmarked.

Learn more here: dustydocs.com.au/link/208/45233/233925/south-canterbury-s-cemeteries.html

South Canterbury Geneologiests have a great list of where else you can look to see birth and death records: sites.rootsweb.com/lookups