Saskatoon pioneer gets headstone more than a century after drowning

Nevil Pendygrasse finally has a headstone more than 100 years after he was buried in Saskatoon.

A look at the historical records of the Pioneer (Nutana) Cemetery shows that life was hard in the city in the late 1800s. Fifty-one of the documented plots are occupied by babies and another 14 by young children.

"It's amazing to think of how difficult life was for those people who came here," said Lynne McLelland.

McLelland has a good sense of it.​ Her great uncle Nevil Pendygrasse was one of those early settlers.

We knew this was a pioneer family of significance.- Obert Friggstad 

Saskatoon is now a city of bridges, but in Pendygrasse's day a journey across the South Saskatchewan River involved a ferry. That's what Nevil was doing in 1887, just shy of his 21st birthday and just days before his mother and sister were due to arrive from Ireland.

"He somehow got tangled up and fell off [the ferry] in some fashion and drowned."

The tragedy was soon forgotten. Pendygrasse was buried in a grave lost to the harsh reality of the times.

Then Obert Friggstad came along.

It was a different time 

"I expect there was a marker at the time of the death … this is 1887 and the town of Saskatoon was five years old and there weren't many people and the few people that there were, were struggling," Friggstad said in an interview with CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning.

Today, Friggstad and the descendants of the Pendygrasse family gathered at the Pioneer Cemetery to place a headstone for Nevil and ensure his tragic death is part of the history of Saskatoon.

This all follows decades of work that began when Friggstad moved into the Pendygrasse home.

"We knew this was a pioneer family of significance," Friggstad said.

Reclaiming history

Friggstad wanted to know more about the family. He scoured the stacks at the local library history room and soon discovered the heartbreaking story of the young man who drowned.

"Over the years I've been collecting bits and pieces and each time I look I find something new."

But what Friggstad couldn't find was a gravesite for Pendygrasse.

"Nevil would have been the sixth person to be buried in that cemetery," he said.

"For the last couple of years I've pursued that with the city archives and people at Woodlawn Cemetery and we have a location."

Friggstad has come to know some of Pendygrasse's family as well, but for him the work of placing the headstone is about completing the historic record.

On that front, there is still much work to do. Friggstad said there are still dozens of unmarked graves in the cemetery.

"Everybody deserves a tombstone, or a marker somewhere."