Melville United Church Cemetery

The value of the Melville United Church Cemetery lies in its association with the Reverend John Munro, a prominent Nova Scotia church leader of the mid-nineteenth century. Munro arrived in Nova Scotia from Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1848, and began his ministry in the Gulf Shore and Wallace area of Cumberland County. He preached throughout New England and Ontario to raise money to build churches in this rural Cumberland County district, and through his efforts, four modest Protestant churches were erected, the others being in Pugwash, Malagash Mines and Wallace. The churches were built as a Free Church of Scotland, and this Gulf Shore church was named by Munro for the Reverend Andrew Melville, who was a follower of John Knox, the leader of the Church of Scotland. In 1925 the congregation voted to join the United Church of Canada when the Council of Union Churches joined with other Canadian Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterian churches forming the United Church of Canada. The Melville Church, which was torn down in the late 1990s, was used by Munro as his base. Rev. Munro, his wife, Margaret Arnot Boyack, and her niece are the only known occupants of the cemetery.