The first pioneers to settle in this area arrived by July 1856, three months after leaving Rock County, Wisconsin, in oxen-drawn prairie schooners; they were the families of Henrik H. Thoen, Ole H. Ness, and Nels H. Colberg, and the bachelors Ole H. Thoen, Gunder Olson, and Amos N. Fosen. About a year later they organized this community cemetery, with the first interment recorded in March 1858. In late summer 1858, circuit minister William Fredrickson of Goodhue County organized the St. Johannes Lutheran Congregation of Meeker and Surrounding Counties at the home of Ole H. Ness, and in 1861 the twenty-five-member congregation was reorganized as the Ness Norwegian Lutheran Church of Meeker County. A monument dedicated on September 13, 1878, marks the common grave of the first five white settlers killed in the 1862 Sioux Indian War, which began about six miles to the west, and Andreas Olson, killed by the Indians in September 1862, is also buried here. In 1864 the congregation purchased forty acres of land, including the cemetery, for one hundred dollars. After holding services in a barn, a granary, and homes, the congregation built the present church in 1874 at a cost of $798.57. The church sill contains many original furnishings, including a baptismal font hand-hewn from a basswood log by Ellef Olson in 1875 and glass candleholders placed in the church that same year, now lavender with age. Over the years, Ness Lutheran Church helped establish more than twenty other churches. At its last Sunday service in 1968, the 110-year-old congregation disbanded, leaving the church and its contents to the Ness Memorial Cemetery Association as a memorial to its members and the early pioneers.