Grafton Street Methodist Church Cemetery - Halifax, Nova Scotia - Worldwide Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

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Grafton Street Methodist Church Cemetery - Halifax, Nova Scotia

in Worldwide Cemeteries

Posted by:  T0SHEA

20T E 454442 N 4943631

This old cemetery is one of the oldest Methodist cemeteries to be found in Canada, having accepted its first interment circa 1793. The oldest Methodist church building in Canada, built in 1792, is only one year older.

The first Grafton Street Methodist Church was built in 1852, only to burn in one of Halifax's many fires on February 23, 1868. The small cemetery beside the church predates even that church, having been used from 1793 to 1844. It was known as the Old Methodist Burying Ground and is now one of the holiest sites of Methodism in Eastern Canada. The cemetery has now been out of use for over 170 years.

Much of the cemetery has been built over by extensions to the church then by a church hall at the rear of the grounds, built in 1951. This covered many graves, though the church retains records of each burial in the cemetery. Today there are only about 30 headstones remaining in the cemetery.

The present Grafton Street Methodist Church replaced that church, opening for services on November 7, 1869. The building remained a Methodist church until June of 1925, when Church Union in Canada made it redundant.

The few Presbyterians who resisted union established The Presbyterian Church, Halifax in 1925. Very soon afterward the church bought this building and in 1930 it was renamed to become The Presbyterian Church of Saint David.

The Presbyterian Church of Saint David was born in 1925, when its parent, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, was in danger of disintegrating in the face of inter-denominational church union among Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists.

The Presbyterian men and women who resisted union did so positively and constructively by first forming the Halifax chapter of the Presbyterian Church Association in 1924 and then establishing The Presbyterian Church, Halifax (incorporated, 1925).

Soon afterwards, the Presbyterians leased and then purchased the former Grafton Street Methodist Church as a congregational home. Built in 1868-69, in the early English style of Trinity Methodist in Charlottetown, the building was designed by David Sterling, architect of Fort Massey Presbyterian (now United) Church in Halifax, and is a registered [Provincial] heritage property. It stands over and in the midst of the Old Methodist Burying Ground of Halifax, one of the most sacred sites of Maritime Methodism.
From Saint David's Presbyterian