Potter's Field in Toronto, Ontario - Find a Grave Cemetery

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Get directions 1 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Toronto Municipality, Ontario Canada

Coordinates: 43.67037, -79.38706
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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Majority of the headstones are either buried or destroyed.

Toronto's Potter's Field, also known as the York General or Strangers Burial Ground was the first non-denominational cemetery in Toronto. Situated on the north west corner of of Yonge and Bloor streets, in what today is the centre of Toronto known as Yorkville. It owes it's existence to Thomas Carfrae Jr., a wealthy retired merchant of Scottish ancestry. Mr. Carfae was appointed by a committee to purchase a burying ground, which he selected and bought the the six acres at Yonge and Bloor in May, 1826. The land was bought from Mrs. Elmsley for 75 pounds, which would be 300 dollars in today's economy. Many who were buried here were the shattered and broken people over the years who received burial in this cemetery, including all those who would have been refused burial in more sanctified ground: the suicides, the madmen, the alcoholics and murders.

Burials were few and far between up to 1832 when the great cholera outbreak killed many people in Toronto. During the outbreak the cemetery filled every quickly, especially during the summer of 1832. The cemetery's last interment took place on 21 January 1855, making 6,685 burials over six acres of land.

After the closure of the cemetery burials were moved to Toronto Necropolis and Crematorium & Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Families claimed and moved the remains of 984 people to the Toronto Necropolis and 364 to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. While remains of one or two individuals have been discovered in years past, the remains of the thousands of others unclaimed by their families were also moved to Mount Pleasant Cemetery before the site of Potter's Field was turned over to developers in 1881.