The miller who sold the hollow to the town "for one shilling and the keeping of it."
Josiah Thorne came up the Elder River in 1821 after twelve years in the merchant navy, and the "Captain" stayed with him for the rest of his life. He built Elderbrook's first grist mill at the falls in 1823, and by the 1840s the mill, a sawmill and a carding works made him the largest employer in the township.
In the winter of 1847 the old churchyard on King Street was full. Thorne owned a wet, wooded hollow north of the mill that was no good for farming, and he offered it to the town council for a single shilling. The deed, which still hangs in the Lodge, adds a condition: the town must keep the grounds "so long as the Mere shall fill." The cemetery company has met that condition for 179 years.
Thorne paid for the chapel that bears his name in 1871 and was buried on the hill beside it five years earlier, before it was finished. His obelisk was the first thing visitors saw from the gate until the chapel went up behind it.
"For one shilling and the keeping of it, so long as the Mere shall fill."