Dickinson - Beechwood Cemetery - Ottawa, Ontario

Waymark Code: WMPWK6

The monument is in section 22, lot 57. There is another waymark nearby.

N 45° 26.909 W 075° 39.545

I suspect that the monument dates from 19 November 1874 when three reinterments took place "from old cemetery" as descibed in the Beechwood Cemetery burial registers: Elizabeth M Dickinson (1821-1861), Lydia M Dickinson (1857-1872) and Alpheus M Dickinson (1855-1856). Perhaps the monument had been relocated from the cemetery that once existed between Cobourg and Wurtemburg.

The following narrative is taken from a Beechwood Cemetery booklet. Born in Denmark, New York on June 1, 1822, Moss Kent Dickinson was the son of an owner of ships and stagecoaches.The ships called at ports on the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Prescott, including Dickinson's Landing, flooded in the 1950s Seaway project. When Dickinson was ten years old his father died from cholera and the boy, after attending schools in Prescott and Cornwall, was employed by his father's business associate. In 1842, at age 20, Dickinson bought a steamboat and barge and shipped farm produce and lumber on the Rideau waterway and the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers. Within 20 years his fleet consisted of 11 steamboats, 55 barges and many tugboats. Dickinson settled in Bytown around 1850 and was involved in several business ventures, including mill construction on the Rideau River, in partnership with Joseph M. Currier, who would become the founder of Beechwood Cemetery. Their saw- and grist-mills on Long Island led to the establishment of the village of Manotick. In 1863 Dickinson became the sole owner of the mills and added wool-carding and cloth-dressing mills as well as shops for the manufacture of furniture, wagons and sleighs, bringing Manotick's population to about 400 residents. Before moving to Manotick in 1870, Dickinson had been a civic leader in Ottawa, serving as its mayor from 1864 until 1866. He was an old friend of John A. Macdonald and was elected a member of parliament in 1882 but did not contest the next election and was defeated in the following one. Dickinson died in Manotick on July 19, 1897.