What if I told you that some of the people listed at Sandgate Cemetery may never have been buried there originally?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been deep in the records researching some of the earliest memorials connected to Sandgate Cemetery, and an incredible pattern is beginning to emerge.
I’ve uncovered a growing number of individuals who died decades before Sandgate Cemetery officially opened in 1881, including:
⚰️ George Caldwell (1843) – Corporal, Mounted Police
⚰️ Denis Horan (1847) – Tipperary-born settler and former convict
⚰️ Alexander Stitt (1849) – whose headstone appears to have been moved from Honeysuckle Cemetery to Sandgate in 1916
⚰️ Sarah Jane Corner (1851) – an infant from Newcastle
⚰️ Ann Jean Gilmore and her daughter Margaret Eliza Gilmore (1852)
⚰️ Morris A. Magney and Honora E. Magney (1852–1853)
Many of these people were originally buried in Newcastle’s long-lost Honeysuckle Point (Cottage Creek) Cemetery, a burial ground that disappeared as Newcastle expanded.
Now I’m trying to piece together the story:
❓ Were headstones moved to Sandgate?
❓ Were remains reinterred?
❓ How many forgotten burials from Newcastle’s earliest cemeteries survive today through Sandgate memorials?
Every record raises more questions than answers, and every answer reveals another forgotten story waiting to be told.
📜 If you have old family photographs, burial records, newspaper clippings, family stories, or information relating to:
• Honeysuckle Cemetery
• Cottage Creek Cemetery
• Early Newcastle burials
• Sandgate Cemetery history
I’d love to hear from you.
👍 Follow Gone But Not Forgotten NSW as we uncover the forgotten people, lost cemeteries, and hidden history of Newcastle and the Hunter Valley—one grave at a time.
#GoneButNotForgottenNSW #SandgateCemetery #NewcastleHistory #HunterValleyHistory #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #AustralianHistory #LostCemeteries #CemeteryResearch #LocalHistory #ForgottenStories
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