The Manitoba Historical Society receives numerous inquiries by email on a variety of interesting and obscure topics in Manitoba history. We answer them where we can but, often, the answer is “we don’t know”. We post some of these questions in hopes that others may be able to help. Where we have been able to find an answer, we post them below in hopes that others will find them useful.
Question (Lois McDonald):
I am trying to find out where an ancestor would have been buried if he died at Plympton, Manitoba in 1899. I found the following on the Internet, from a directory in London, England, where my ancestor was from. Pannett, Frederick Charles d. 14 Sep 1899 (30) at Plympton, Manitoba, Canada, son of the late Richard of Haywards Heath. Is there a cemetery at Plympton? I can’t find out very much about this town.
MHS Answer (prepared by Gordon Goldsborough):
It appears that Plympton was never actually a town. According to the 2000 book by the Manitoba government, Geographic Names of Manitoba, Plympton was a post office, opened in 1879 at Section 21 - Township 10 - Range 5E (see here for information on the S-T-R system), southeast of Winnipeg in the Rural Municipality of Springfield. It appears to have been located along the railway line of the Greater Winnipeg Water District that ran from Winnipeg to the source of the city’s drinking water at Shoal Lake. The approximate geographic coordinates for the Plympton post office are N49.84810, W96.85480. It closed in 1921.
Plympton was also a pair of school districts in the same general vicinity. According to a directory of rural schools compiled by Mary Perfect, South Plympton School No. 81 was established in October 1879, with a school building erected at NE8-10-5E. North Plympton School was also formed in October 1879, with a school at SW33-10-5E southwest of the village of Dugald. There are no records of commemorative markers at either school site.
Carved in Stone: Manitoba Cemeteries and Burial Sites, a 1997 publication of the Manitoba Genealogical Society, does not specifically list a “Plympton Cemetery” in the RM of Springfield, or anywhere in Manitoba. In fact, it lists only one cemetery in Township 10 and Range 5E, the “Unruh Burial Site” at 17-10-5E, an unofficial burial place which does not seem a likely place for the grave of F. C. Pannett. The oldest cemetery in the area is Sunnyside Cemetery, established in 1872 at NW29-11-5E. If Mr. Pannett was buried locally, it would be our guess for the more likely place of burial. The MGS has a burial transcript for Sunnyside Cemetery (and for most other cemeteries in the RM) so their transcript would probably say if Mr. Pannett is buried there.
A potentially useful source of additional information on Plympton is the book Springfield: First Rural Municipality in Manitoba, 1873-1973 that was published in 1974 by the Dugald Women’s Institute History Committee. Copies of the book are available at the Legislative Library of Manitoba, Winnipeg Millennium Library, and the University of Manitoba Library.
Posted: 11 November 2011
If you have other questions on Manitoba history, go here or search the MHS website.
Page revised: 9 August 2012
