Birdston community was founded in the 1860s when V.I. Bird opened a general mercantile store about 2 miles northwest of the cemetery. Because the local economy depended on cotton, a gin was soon built near the store. Within a few years, the store and gin were relocated a mile east of the cemetery at the halfway point on Main Road from Fairfield to Corsicana. The Birdston post office opened on Dec. 11, 1866. By 1867 the community also had a school, and by 1872 a church building used by all faiths. The cemetery was opened on land donated by Edd and Juliett Burleson for church and school purposes. The first grave, near the church, was for a child, Mary Rayburn, whose family had been traveling from Fairfield to Corsicana and stopped at Sherrard's Boarding House in Birdston, where she fell ill and died. A second grave was dug near the church when T.J. Gilbert died on Dec. 5, 1872. By 1888 Mrs. Burleson sold additional cemetery land to trustees. Birdston lost its post office and businesses after the Burlington Rock Island Railroad bypassed the community in 1909, and the school closed in 1920. The cemetery remained in use in the years that followed, and in the 1950s a new section was added through the purchase of acreage from the Charley Gregory Estate.