The cemetery was established about 1739 by Joseph Cantey, a planter and member of the Commons House of Assembly, on the site of Mount Hope, his plantation near the Santee River. Cantey, who died in 1763, served what was then Craven County as a captain in the militia and justice of the peace, then represented Prince Frederick's Parish in the Commons House of Assembly from 1754 to 1757. Several generations of Canteys, along with members of the Burgess, Clemons, Keels, McDonald, Montgomery (McGomery), Oliver, and Rhodus families related to the Canteys, are buried there. In 1883 Joseph Cantey's great-great grandson Joseph Samuel Cantey deeded the two-acre tract to eight trustees, and the cemetery is owned and maintained by the Cantey Cemetery Association.