Bethany Cemetery was historically associated with Bethany Christian Church and a public school. The church supported Add Ran College, now Texas Christian University, for several years. R.W. Carpenter (1832-1898), an early Plano settler and Confederate Civil War veteran, founded the church, school, and cemetery. The first burial was an infant, Walter Clark, who died January 4, 1877. Carpenter's young daughter, Mary Katie, died March 14, 1878, and was the second burial. Several other members of the Carpenter family, including R.W. Carpenter himself, are interred there, along with many early area residents. The northern one-third of the property contains several marked burials, including elaborate marble spire or scroll monuments, some with decorative curbing, especially for early Carpenter family graves, while others have more modest marble or granite monuments and a few are marked only by cinder blocks mounted in the ground. The church, school, and a teacher's dormitory once stood in the southern portion of the cemetery, and evidence of these structures remains visible on the ground. Although this part of the cemetery has no markers, unmarked burials are reported there. The church was founded in 1876 and had a sizable membership at the turn of the twentieth century, but as later road improvements provided better access to town, membership dwindled. The church disbanded about 1933, and the abandoned church building, school, and neighboring structures were eventually razed.