An Indian who often rested on this hill was killed by his wild prairie horse in the 1850s and buried here. Sarah Witherspoon, an early Anglo-American settler born in 1832, was interred nearby in 1857 in the first marked grave. Soon after Coleman Jenkins died in 1861, his brother Alexander Jenkins, who lived from 1829 to 1895, deeded this public burial ground. In 1873, Jenkins helped found the Mount Zion Presbyterian Church here. A church house was built and also used as a school. As the population shifted in the early 1900s, the church and school closed. The cemetery is the remaining site of that pioneer community.