The Society of Friends' burial ground in Launceston was once located where 12-14 Pedder Street is today.
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Quaker converts, John Lawson and Thomas Willington, donated the land in March 1840.
There were at least 11 interments in this cemetery.
The earliest known burial was the son of a Hobart butcher, six-year-old James Propsting who tragically drowned when the John capsized on the Tamar River on January 8, 1844. A small headstone marked his grave.
Another was John Lawson’s mother Catherine Jubb, who died in her 79th year on September 16, 1844.
The Cornwall Chronicle states the fourth burial was Mr Willington, but it was Thomas’ wife, 48-year-old Susannah Willington who died on April 17, 1851.
However, there may have been two other burials in the 1840s.
The Quaker archives note the deaths of James Ashworth, a 50-year-old miller on April 4, 1844 and David Brooker, a 54-year-old labourer on January 1, 1845.
A report compiled in July 1890 by Charles Nickalls, secretary of the Launceston Cemetery Company, provides a good description of the cemetery at that time.
It was about 150 by 80 feet, surrounded on three sides by a hawthorn hedge with the boundary facing Pedder Street in a dilapidated state, made up of briars, rough fencing and patched up in a ‘slovenly fashion’.
A weatherboard cottage with an iron roof abutted the street. The grounds were overgrown with grass, weeds and wattles, with some evergreen trees.
The part used as a burial ground had a low hedge of briars and wattles about three feet high and extending 20 feet across the ground in the south-west corner.
There were nine mounds and one headstone.
A newly-formed grave noted by Nickalls was probably Sarah Rawson, aged 70, who died on April 14, 1890. She was the wife of Robert Rawson, a land agent of Sheppy Street.
There were at least two further burials here. Jane Ann Acres died aged 76 on November 22, 1900 and her husband Robert Acres, aged 77, on December 8, 1902.
Both funerals left their residence at 12 Batten Street for the Friends’ Cemetery.
From 1863 Benjamin Cockerill rented the land and built the small cottage.
He died in 1867 and his wife Sarah in 1870, their daughter Harriet lived there until her death aged 89 in July 1929.
The council condemned and demolished the cottage.
In 1931 the Society of Friends offered the land to the council, which recommended it be used for residential purposes.
The bodies were not removed.