Before the courthouse was completed, the community chose the highest elevation within Bellefonte's corporate limits as its burial place. The earliest inscribed marker in Bellefonte Cemetery bears the date 1826. Bellefonte was Jackson County's seat of justice from 1828 until November 1868, but the Civil War exacted a heavy toll: the Federal Army burned the courthouse, the town never recovered, and the town square was sold at public auction in 1878. Only Bellefonte Cemetery remains of the once bustling river port town. A 1936 TVA Survey identified 229 grave plots and 57 inscribed markers there, and recent surveys have found many graves marked with plain limestone rocks and numerous unmarked graves. Preservation efforts began in 2005, and the cemetery was listed in the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register in 2006. Bellefonte began as Riley's on Mud Creek, which the Alabama Legislature established as a voting site five days after Jackson County was created on December 13, 1819. Shortly afterward, Stephen Carter and George W. Higgins purchased James Riley's 640-acre Cherokee Reserve and, according to local history, renamed Riley's on Mud Creek to Bellefonte after the spring that supplied the town's water, then sold town lots. On December 15, 1821, the Alabama Legislature incorporated 60 acres in Bellefonte, and six years later extended the town's corporate limits to include 100 acres donated to the county by Carter and Higgins. Bellefonte became Jackson County's first permanent seat of justice, and a two-story brick courthouse was erected in 1828.