Jacob Lyssy (1837-1880) and John Pawlik, Jr. (1845-1912) of the Czestochowa parish each donated one acre of land to Bishop Anthony D. Pellicer of the Archdiocese of San Antonio for a burial ground for the newly established Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church at Czestochowa, later spelled Cestohowa. The town was also known as St. Joe because of St. Joseph Catholic School there. Early graves were often unmarked, or their markers were displaced, and the earliest marked grave is that of Franciscus Gawlik, who died in August 1878. During the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 to 1920, several burials date from that period, including Frances Moczygemba Gawlik and three of her children, who died in the same week of March 1920. Most grave markers were inscribed in Polish until the 1930s. Among those buried there are many people instrumental in the formation of the Czestochowa parish, including the Rev. Stanislaus Przyborowski (1872-1957), who served the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church for 35 years and established several other Catholic churches in the area, and the Rev. Edward Dworaczyk (1906-1965), author of many Polish history books. Of the more than 75 military veterans interred there by 2000, several served in the Confederate Army, while others served in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. At the dawn of the 21st century, there were 864 graves in the cemetery, which remained a chronicle of Polish American settlement in Texas.