Edward Bowen’s Property

The Cemetery’s First Owners

Judge Edward Bowen, Quebec,  c.1840

The original owner of the property was Le Séminaire du Québec, an educational institution in Quebec City. The property was sold in 1831 to Judge Edward Bowen.  He was obliged to construct a house on the property within a year.  This was to ensure the proper upkeep of the grounds and he paid an annual seigneurial tax.

Judge Bowen was born in Kinsale (Republic of Ireland) in 1780 and came to Lower Canada in 1797. He studied law in Quebec City in the offices of Jonathan Sewell and John Caldwell and was authorized to practice law in 1803.  He soon became a successful politician, lawyer and Judge of the Court of King’s Bench at Quebec at age 39.

The sale by Edward Bowen

Years later, due to failing health and financial problems, Judge Bowen decided to sell his property to the Protestant Cemetery Association for use as a rural burial ground. Due to several cholera outbreaks in the 1830s, there was an urgent need to find suitable land for the new cemetery on the outskirts of Quebec City. A deed of sale was signed on October 19th, 1848, for a sum of $9,000. This association was the result of the unification of the Church of England Cemetery Association and the Protestant Cemetery Association. 

In the same year, the cemetery directors hired William Ware, a Provincial Land Surveyor, to draw a plan of the newly acquired property.

William Ware plans, Mount Hermon Cemetery, Quebec, c.1848