Memorial Cemetery in Ste. Genevieve emerged gradually as the town itself moved during the 18th Century from its original site near the Mississippi River to higher ground after the great flood of 1735, replacing an older cemetery that was eventually lost to the encroaching river. Its earliest burials are uncertain, and although local lore long held 1787 as its founding date, parish records show that burials occurred in the new town by that period and that François Leclere, first buried in the old town cemetery in 1788, was disinterred and moved here in 1793. For nearly a century the cemetery served as the community's principal burying ground, with a northern section used for non-Catholics and sometimes called the public graveyard or Protestant Cemetery, though ownership remained vested in the Roman Catholic citizens of Ste. Genevieve under an 1825 confirmation of the original Spanish land grant. By the 1870s overcrowding and neglect had become serious problems, and in 1881 the city council closed both sections to further burials, after which interments went to newer cemeteries at Valle Spring and elsewhere. Over time the cemetery came to be called Memorial Cemetery, and by the 1930s it was also known as Memorial Park, a wooded refuge and play area in the heart of town. Though only about 300 monuments and tombstones remain visible, church records suggest that between 3,000 and 4,000 people were buried here, including wealthy and poor residents alike, people of African descent both enslaved and free, mixed-race families, Native Americans, many infants and young children, and mothers who died in childbirth, as well as victims of cholera, hunting accidents, steamboat explosions, and mining accidents. Renewed preservation efforts in 1935, in the late 1960s, and after the cemetery was deeded by the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis to the City of Ste. Genevieve in 1995, along with a 2004 Save America's Treasures grant administered through the National Park Service, helped restore monuments, improve the grounds, and secure its long-term stewardship through the Foundation for Restoration of Ste. Genevieve.