Gérard Leduc
President, Potton Heritage Association

Take advantage of the beautiful summer and fall days to explore the back roads of Potton Township. Discover some of the twenty or so cemeteries which tell a great deal about our history. You will find ancient names which have since disappeared, see the tombs of young mothers who died in childbirth, children taken away by epidemics, and the names of others who enjoyed long lives. Cemeteries are not only fascinating places to visit; they also invite you to think back over our past.

PIONEER CEMETERY
Earlier this summer, in Highwater, we rediscovered the tomb of one of Potton's pioneers, Abel Skinner, who settled in 1797 next to Capt. Moses Elkins' land. Sheltered in a woodlot, the Skinner cemetery is set on a large man-made mound and holds over twenty-five burials. One tombstone reads: "To the memory of Abel Skinner Age 85 1839." This tombstone is a large slate slab, which was engraved by hand and which includes the figure "3" written in reverse (mirror image, why?). Abel's wife Jemima (1754-1838) is also buried here. Another interesting feature of this cemetery is the presence of several small standing stones which may mark the burial places of ancient Native people, long before the arrival of our first settlers.


NOTORIOUS SMUGGLER
One of our legends revolves around the name Skinner given to an island and its cave on Lake Memphremagog. This island is said to have been the hideout of Uriah Skinner, a notorious bootlegger. Skinner is said to have hidden his goods in the forest and taken shelter in the cave, which was at that time well above water level. Today, the cave is flooded due to the higher water level of the lake (it is now two metres higher), the result of the construction, in 1883, of a dam on the Magog River by the Magog Textile & Print Company.

Skinner's Cave, 1874. (Source: Harper's Magazine, 1874)

The Abenakis are said to have feared this cave, which, they believed, was the hideout of the snakelike creature Anaconda (now popularly known as Memphré). In 1853, the Stanstead Journal reported a testimony to the effect that in the fall of 1759, following the raid on the village of Odanak by Rogers' Rangers, the Abenakis, who were pursuing the Rangers on the lake, took off when they saw them taking cover in the cave on Skinner Island. So the Rangers were saved by Memphré!

ANCIENT BURIAL GROUND?
The Skinner Island cave may have been dug out by man, since the area's geology does not lend itself to this kind of formation. Who could have dug it? Possibly the same people who left the innumerable stone works in our area and whom I call the ancient stone builders. According to legend, human bones were found in the cave and attributed to Uriah Skinner. They could just as well have been the bones of a much more ancient people, as caves were often used as sacred places for burials by ancient civilizations.

The shores of Lake Memphremagog have seen many other visitors long before the arrival of our notorious Uriah Skinner. Merry Point, in Magog, was a Native burial site during the Archaic Period, which dates back 6,000 or 7,000 years. In 1908, Magog town workers dug out a gravel mound containing human bones stained with red ochre. They also found a beautifully polished and skillfully worked slate birdstone. This artifact can be seen at the Séminaire de Sherbrooke Museum. Ancient and mysterious burials sites are still being found in this area.

For those interested, a folder, Potton Cemetery Route, is available free of charge at the Mansonville Tourist Bureau in Reilly House. Please note: several of the Potton cemeteries are on private land, so permission from the owners should be obtained before trespassing.