Murrayville Cemetery

Murrayville Cemetery sits up on the hill just west of 216 Street, with trees around it and, on a clear day, Golden Ears to the north. It’s small, old and quiet, and it holds a good slice of early Langley.

About

It’s one of the Township’s three cemeteries and one of two the Cemetery Bylaw treats as historic, along with Fort Langley. The Township’s 2019 cemetery review called it fully developed and almost full, with room to grow limited to filling in old driveways, because the ground is steep and access is tight. If you’re hoping for a plot here, call the office before you set your heart on it.

History

The Odd Fellows lodge from Cloverdale (Cloverdale Lodge No. 15) opened it in 1891 as the Odd Fellows Cemetery, on land the Langley Heritage Society says the pioneer Murray family gave. The municipality bought it in 1904 and called it Langley Prairie Cemetery; over time, people just called it Murrayville.

There’s a puzzle here: the oldest stone is older than the cemetery. Alexander Murray drowned in the Fraser in January 1884 trying to save a friend, and was buried at Fort Langley. When the Odd Fellows cemetery opened, his family moved him here to be closer to home.

The Heritage Society’s 2025 article “Stories in Stone” names the first burial as homesteader John Jackson, killed by a tree he was felling on Christmas Day 1892. Look closely at his marble stone: the N in Jackson is carved backwards.

The museum’s virtual tour points to a few more:

• Paul and Lucy Murray, who came in the 1870s and gave their name to Murray’s Corners, later Murrayville. One monument remembers them with some of their children.
• Johnston and Margaret Nelson, the second family to settle in Murrayville, who ran Langley’s first steam sawmill. Their red granite marker is a polished sphere on a pedestal, hard to miss.
• Early Japanese Canadian graves in the older section, marking the early presence of Japanese Canadian families in Langley.

Remembrance

The cenotaph is a Celtic cross, a copy of the one at Fort Langley, and the cemetery has a veterans’ section. Veterans Affairs Canada’s Canadian Virtual War Memorial includes a Second World War serviceman buried here. The Heritage Society credits local volunteers with reviving the Murrayville Remembrance Day ceremony in recent years; see Remembrance Day in Langley for this year’s details.

Visiting and nearby

The bylaw asks drivers to stay on the lanes at 15 km/h unless posted, and dogs must be leashed. For family research, the BC Genealogical Society has a 2005 transcription of the stones, cenotaph included. Langley Lawn Cemetery is a short drive west on 44 Avenue, and our Murrayville guide covers Five Corners and the rest of the neighbourhood. Every Langley cemetery is on our cemeteries page.

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