Shady Oaks Gardens Cemetery, also known as Paupers Cemetery, has served as Polk County's primary pauper cemetery since 1963. Polk County Government paid for burials for people who had no funds for a private burial, including county hospital patients, inmates, unknown persons, and coroner's cases involving crimes. Before this cemetery was established, paupers were buried by funeral directors in designated sections of municipal and rural cemeteries throughout the county. Before 1968, no established policies governed pauper burials, but that year the Commissioners of Polk County set rules for interments and ensured proper record keeping. In 1963, unknown burials from the original Paupers Cemetery northwest of this site and graves from the nearby community of Philippi were relocated here. Rosamond Younger, a Philippi burial who died in 1918, is the earliest known death represented here. Moses "Doorman" Williams, who lived from 1919 to 1988, a noted African American blues musician and master of the one-string guitar, is buried here.