In 1895, members of the German Bethel Baptist Church, now Bethel Heights Baptist Church, established this graveyard as the German Baptist Cemetery after A.T. Voss deeded two acres to the church's deacons for cemetery use. The property lay about one mile east of the former church site and across the road from the Hemmeline School in the small community originally settled by German immigrants and now known as Plainview/Bethel Heights. Early organizational records were handwritten in German and set aside one acre for family plots of eight graves to be sold for one dollar, with the second acre reserved for community use. Minutes from 1915 show that cemetery officials decided it would be open to persons of any nationality or skin color, while giving preference to members of the congregation and their families. Although no official record of a name change survives, obituaries show that during the early 1900s it came to be known as Hemmeline Cemetery, possibly influenced by American involvement in World Wars I and II, when many people and institutions abandoned German references to avoid hostility. The church itself changed its name from German Bethel Baptist Church to Bethel Heights Baptist Church in 1940, and it continued to administer the cemetery until a cemetery association organized in 1974.