Virginia native and Civil War veteran James A. Crenshaw married Henrietta Barker Elliott in Kentucky in 1870, and two years later they moved with their first child to Bolivar Peninsula, where they built a two-story house nearby. James became a successful farmer who carried produce across the water to Galveston markets with a fleet of nine sailboats. The couple eventually had ten children, but two young daughters died, one in 1875 and the other in 1882, and were buried here in a grove of oak trees near the house. The family home survived the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, but afterward the J.A. Crenshaws left the peninsula. Two sons stayed, and daughter Helen Crenshaw married Dr. Newell W. Atkinson in Edna, Texas, in 1907. The land containing the burial ground remained in family hands, though the cemetery's iron fencing gradually disappeared except for a portion embedded in a tree. In 2003, two descendants of Helen and Newell Atkinson donated the land, including the burial ground, to the Galveston Independent School District, which maintains the historic cemetery as a link to early Bolivar settlers.