In 1886, while a resident of Coryell County, James Maxwell, Jr, sold three acres of land for five dollars to trustees C.A. McMillan, H. Willaford, and W. Brinson and formally established Maxwell Cemetery. Members of the families of the three trustees are buried there, but no Maxwell family members are interred at the site. The cemetery's earliest marked burial is that of Samuel McCreary, who died in 1853. Over one-third of the graves are those of small children, showing the difficulty of childhood at the time. Burials there include veterans of the Black Hawk War, Civil War, and World War I. The cemetery served the Murphy area for over 100 years, with the last burial in 1966.