Grave Marker, wrought iron

Grave Marker, wrought iron

Smithfield Cemetery, Stewarts Road, Barron, QLD 4871

Marked grave at Smithfield Cemetery, consisting of a badly damaged wrought-iron fence surrounding a rudimentary iron grave marker.

There are no identifying marks to determine whose grave it is.

Mulgrave Shire Council built a timber picket fence around the grave circa 1988, and the fence is now in poor state of repair. In 2013 Converge Heritage and Community consultants recommended Cairns Regional Council treat the ironwork around the marked grave to avoid further corrosion, although this does not appear to have been done

n.c., possibly Edwin Crossland [blacksmith]

Cairns (Qld.) -- History;
Cairns (NE Qld SE55-02);
Cemeteries--Australia;
Colonisation;
Crossland, Edwin;
Frontier and pioneer life -- Australia -- Cairns Region (Qld.);
Grave Stones;
Grave Marker;
Pioneers -- Australia -- Cairns Region (Qld.) -- History;
Queensland -- Cairns Region.
Stele (Archaeology);
Wrought Iron.

c. 1870s

There are several different claims as to who is interred in this plot. It has been suggested that the Smithfield blacksmith, Edwin Crossland, would have been grieving over the death of his eleven-day old daughter Rebecca on 16 November 1878 and he would have had the tools and facilities to make the wrought iron fence and grave marker. Heritage consultant Benjamin Gall notes that “the grave site itself is very small and suggests a child or an infant”. There were at least seven infants buried at Smithfield between 1877 and 1887.

Smithfield cane farmer Maxwell Stewart (born 1927) claims to remember seeing Louis Kopp’s name “freshly painted on the ... only grave standing”. It seems more likely that Stewart saw Kopp’s name painted on the decorative cast iron grave marker rather than on this grave.

Descendants of Martha Hudson claim the marked grave is hers. She died in 1915 and was the last registered burial at Smithfield. Others think that the grave belongs to a ‘Miss Murdoch’, whose date of death is unknown.

Based on surveyor Behan’s field-notes, it seems likely that this marked grave was one of the three that he identified in 1883, meaning it belonged to a person who was buried between 1877 and 1878 when the Smithfield township was in existence. Given the small size of the grave site, it may have been a child’s grave. There were three children buried at Smithfield between 1877 and 1878 – Mary Gernox, Christopher Kelly and Rebecca Crossland.

Wrought Iron fence and grave marker
Grave marker 1150 mm high x 485 mm wide.
Fence 810 mm high, 1200 mm x 1800 mm square.

Physical Object

165152S1454136E
Smithfield Cemetery, Stewarts Road, Barron, QLD 4871
Old Smithfield township, Barron QLD 4871
Colonial Queensland
1870s

This page © 2021 oldsmithfield.com Original item owned by Cairns Regional Council.

See also: