History: The Village of Kilbride, now part of the City of Burlington, was named after a town in County Wicklow Ireland. As crown patentees, the Land Registry Office lists Angus MacDonnell, Deputy Provincial Surveyor, registering 200 acres, all of Lot 9, on 4 September 1800. Kilbride United Pioneer Cemetery is located on the eastern half of the lot.

At one time the church was an attractive frame building known as Zion Methodist Church, New Connection. It was built in 1860 on land donated by Mr and Mrs George Hardbottle Sr. The land was deeded to the church by Mr Hardbottle’s wife Rhoda for the sum of five dollars. The deed which has been very well preserved through the years is still legible. It was created during the reign of Queen Victoria and shows that one-half acre of land was given to be used only as a cemetery and church. Faded names on the deed, rolled in scroll fashion on a carved walnut base, include George Hardbottle, Rhoda Hardbottle, William Galloway, Robert Simpson, Thomas Galloway and William Harris and witnessed by John Matthews and Frances Baker. The timbers and siding for the building were suppled by William Bousfield who owned and operated a saw mill in Tally Ho. A few years after the church was built it was moved from its original foundation and transported on skids by oxen to a more central part of the village where it stands today and is used as a place of worship by many, some of whom are descendants of the early pioneers of the district.

Old maple trees and wire fencing with posts guard the front of the old cemetery. Sumac bushes shelter one side while open countryside (which is rapidly being built upon) are viewed from the other direction. In the centre of the cemetery eight posts and black railings, broken and worn with age, mark what was once a family plot,now unknown. Many monuments are broken while other are illegible. Still on others can be read the names that mark the resting place of many a pioneer forefather. Most burials are from the middle to the late 1800s and of the approximate 42 remaining monuments the earliest burial is for Harry? Truman, son of ? Zimmerman, who died June/July? 27? 1855.