Founded in 1862, Grafton saw ordinary losses in its first four years, but 1866 brought a devastating wave of death. Thirteen people died in rapid succession from diphtheria, scarlet fever, a swing accident, and violence tied to conflict over land and scarce resources. The cemetery includes burials of early settlers and Southern Paiute people who lived and worked alongside them, and although many headstones are missing, it is believed that 74 to 84 graves exist. In the Utah Territory, settlers along the upper Virgin River occupied places already used by Southern Paiute people for subsistence, helping produce conflict, while Navajo people south of the Colorado River were also pressured by pioneer settlement. After raids and retaliatory killings near Pipe Spring, Navajo raiders killed Robert M. Berry, his wife Isabella Hales Berry, and his brother Joseph S. Berry as they traveled home to Berryville, and their bodies were brought to Grafton for burial because it was then the county seat. During this period, Brigham Young ordered southern Utah villages to combine into towns of at least 150 men, leading Grafton and other Virgin River towns to be deserted as residents consolidated at Rockville, though Grafton farmers continued tending their fields and the town was resettled by 1868.