Greenwood Cemetery began on land purchased from the federal government by Dr. Ziba Swan of Albany, New York, in 1821. The oldest section consists of a one-half-acre parcel that Swan set aside for a cemetery, where the first interments took place in 1825 after Polly Utter and her daughter Cynthia were murdered. Twenty-one years later, twenty-one local citizens, including Dr. Ebenezer Raynale, a member of Michigan's first senate, bought the cemetery property and an additional one and one-half acres from Swan. Martha Baldwin, founder of the Ladies' Library Association, organized local women into a group that incorporated in 1885 as the Greenwood Cemetery Association. The cemetery was enlarged three times between 1846 and 1904, growing to eight acres, and in 1946 the city of Birmingham assumed its operation. Greenwood Cemetery contains the remains of some of Oakland County’s earliest pioneers and prominent citizens, including Dr. Swan, buried in 1847; Birmingham's only Revolutionary War veteran, John Daniels, buried in 1832; Michigan State Senator Ebenezer Raynale; Martha Baldwin; Birmingham Eccentric publishers George Mitchell and Almeron Whitehead; U.S. Congressman Roland Trowbridge; George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth, who established the Cranbrook Educational Community; and Pewabic Pottery founder Mary Chase Stratton and her husband William Buck Stratton.