Description of Historic Place

Eden Cemetery is located at 2830 Derry Road West on the southeast corner of Derry Road West and Shelter Bay Road, east of Winston Churchill Boulevard, in the former village of Lisgar, Mississauga. The cemetery was established in 1840.

The property was designated by the City of Mississauga in 2007 for its heritage value under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act (By-law 087-2007).

Heritage Value

Eden Cemetery is associated with the Switzer family and Eden United Church. Samuel Switzer purchased Lot 10 in 1830 and gave his son John one hundred acres in 1834. In January 1840, John Switzer sold a portion of land for five pounds to Wesleyan Methodist Church trustees for a chapel and burial ground. A frame church (Switzer's Church) was erected in December 1840 and stood until 1869 when it was dismantled after the Eden Church, built in brick, was completed. Today, the cemetery stands alone as Eden Church was demolished in 1980. A new Eden Church was built in 1987 at the northwest corner of Battleford Road and Winston Churchill Boulevard.

Eden Cemetery serves as a burying ground for many of the area's earliest pioneers, including the Switzer family and Nathan Kindree, whose family arrived in the area in the 1820s. The gravesites found in the cemetery provide important insight into the lives of the inhabitants of the former village of Lisgar and the surrounding areas. Burials in Eden Cemetery still occur, but infrequently and only in plots previously purchased.

Eden Cemetery is a good representation of nineteenth century cemetery design. This is characterized by a natural setting to comfort the living, the creation of a secure space for the dead, the use of markers and monuments to celebrate the memory of individuals of historic importance and a park-like layout for public use.

Source: City of Mississauga, By-law 087-2007.

Character-Defining Elements

Character defining elements that contribute to the heritage value of Eden Cemetery include the:
- Switzer family tombstones
- original markers and monuments, with their surviving inscriptions and ornamentation
- original plan and placement of gravesites as separate individual markers
- park-like setting
- tombstone orientation and dimension