The Presbyterians and Methodists of Shelburne joined
Church Union in Canada in 1925, forming Trinity United Church and using St. John's Presbyterian Kirk as their church. The old Methodist church became the church hall. Built in 1891, the church stands at the bottom of the Old Kirk Burying Ground, which was established by Loyalists in 1784. The first Presbyterian Church was built in the same year, 1784, a temporary building, replaced in 1803-1804 by St. John's Kirk. It is from that church, St. John's Presbyterian Kirk, that this cemetery received its name.
The cemetery contains the remains of many of the early settlers of Shelburne, with many headstones dating from the eighteenth century. There are upward of one hundred headstones in the cemetery and there are likely many unmarked graves, as well. The cemetery appears not to have been used for many decades.
Old Kirk Burying Ground
DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
The Old Kirk Burying Ground is located on a prominent lot in the centre of Shelburne beside St. John’s United Church. In use since 1784, it provides a historical record of Shelburne’s Presbyterian history. Provincial designation applies only to the burial ground and does not include the church or church hall.
HERITAGE VALUE
The Old Kirk Burying Ground is valued as a visual record of the development of the Presbyterian Church in Shelburne from the arrival of the Loyalist settlers in the eighteenth century to the present day.
A cemetery was established on this property by Loyalists in 1784. These settlers came to Shelburne to escape the American Revolution and were members of the Church of Scotland. The cemetery was located near the temporary Presbyterian Church, or Kirk. Between 1803 and 1804 a more permanent church, St. John’s Kirk, was built beside the cemetery. The church was used until it was sold and moved to make way for the new Trinity United Presbyterian Church. At the 1925 union to form the United Church of Canada, the church became Trinity United Church. Many of Shelburne’s earliest settlers, including George Gracie, Rev. Matthew Dripps and Alex Leyburn are buried there.
Many of the gravestones in the Old Kirk Burying Ground date from the eighteenth century and were carved locally, which is not the case for many of the eighteenth-century headstones in other early Nova Scotian graveyards such as the Old Burying Ground in Halifax or the graveyard beside Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal. The cemetery is located on a prominent site within the town on a piece of land granted to several early residents by the British Crown in trust for the public for the erection of a Protestant church.
CHARACTER-DEFINING ELEMENTS
- location on a prominent lot in the centre of Shelburne;
- historic headstones carved by local masons;
- absence of roads or automobile thoroughfare;
- historic fences surrounding some plots;
- granite slabs supporting part of the knoll.
From Historic Places Canada