A cemetery and a community

Rowes Hill is at Lower Mittagong on Old South Road. The Society and Council record that farmer Thomas Troy donated land in the 1850s for a church, school and Anglican cemetery. The early slab-and-bark church and school were later replaced by a stone building. The Society records that the earliest surviving headstone is dated 1868, although the date of the first burial is not certain. The cemetery takes its name from Rowes Hill, associated with the local Rowe family. Some children from the Mittagong State Farm Homes were buried here; their lives and records deserve careful, respectful research.

Society volunteer Carol Nolan began the research behind The People of Rowes Hill, a record of known burials in marked and unmarked graves. It brings together cemetery transcriptions, church and newspaper records, the Ryerson Index and material held by the Society. The project is dedicated to her memory.

On a Society tour, Carol gave members flowers from her garden to place where children from the Mittagong State Farm Homes lay in unmarked graves. Her determination to remember people from every background became part of the work that volunteers continued after her death.

Remembering Carol Nolan · Council and Society cemetery history · Society history of Rowes Hill · The Society’s research indexes · Mittagong Farm Homes history