Locust Grove Cemetery served as a burial ground for slaves and free blacks since the early 19th century and was the site of Shippensburg's first African American church, established in the 1830s. Edward Shippen Burd granted the land to Shippensburg’s African American community in 1842. It was the only public cemetery open to African Americans in the area until the late 20th century. The graves of veterans from the Civil War to the Vietnam conflict include those of twenty-six Civil War soldiers.