Old New Garden Cemetery, one of the oldest in Limestone County and listed on the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register, contains many of the area’s earliest settlers, including Patsy Elmore, widow of a Revolutionary War veteran, and War of 1812 veterans Thomas Martindale, William Levesque, Andrew McWilliams, and William Malone. The oldest dated headstone is that of Barbara Fisher, who died in 1831, though other undated and unmarked graves are thought to be older. Most dated burials occurred from 1850 to 1869, when influenza or other disease may have swept through the area, and when wartime occupation of North Alabama by Union forces and the hardships of Reconstruction may have contributed to a high death rate. Graves in the lower part of the cemetery are thought to be those of slaves and possibly casualties of the nearby battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle fort. Colonel Lathrop, the Union commander of the fort, was killed in the battle, buried where he fell, later reburied in this cemetery, and after the war removed again for final burial in the North. This old section was largely unused after 1870, with only occasional burials afterward, the last in 1917. New Garden Cumberland Presbyterian Church, one of the area’s earliest churches and the nucleus of the pioneer community of New Garden, began at a camp meeting in 1818 along Muddy Creek led by Reverend Robert Donnell with Albert Gibson, Robert Steele, Adam Burney, and William Levesque assisting. In 1820 Reverend John Comahan organized the congregation at a meeting in Robert Steele’s barn attended by ten people, several from the Steele family. A log church was built on New Garden Hill in 1823 at the north end of the cemetery on land then owned by Jeffery Murrell, and in 1834 the trustees of the New Garden Society—Robert Steele, James Grigsby, James Montgomerty, and T.S. Garrison—bought the two acres containing the church and camp ground, with an adjoining parcel added in 1845. A school built there was used until marauding Union troops tore it down and used the timber to construct buildings at Sulphur Trestle Fort. After 1878 the congregation moved to Elkmont and later disbanded completely.