Honouring ancestors is a long-held tradition

In January 1886, a recently bereaved Edinburgh widow named Catherine Cockburn bought a three-square-yard plot in the Dalry Necropolis, a cemetery half a mile from the family home. Her late husband Andrew had been only 39, the couple had been married only four years, and they had had two children. 

Mrs. Cockburn (“and/or her heirs”) paid £4 for the plot and a formidable document entitled “Certificate of Right of Burial in the Edinburgh Cemetery at Dalry.” She buried her husband, took in lodgers and, before the outbreak of the First World War, moved with her now-adult son to Toronto. Her daughter Annie followed later, and this daughter’s grand-daughter — my mother — still has the certificate. 

“The ‘Compartment’ is K; the plot is 30,” wrote my mother in her e-mail. “Hope this helps.” 

And so on All Saints’ Day I went to the Edinburgh Cemetery at Dalry to pay my respects to my great-great-grandfather Andrew, about whom I know almost nothing.