Wharton County was established in 1846, and the county seat of Wharton was laid out on the Mexican land grant of “Old 300” colonist William Kincheloe. In 1866, county commissioners appointed James Whitten to find a suitable cemetery site, and the location selected a few blocks from the courthouse square was already being used as a graveyard. The oldest marked burial is Barbara Betts, who died in 1843. Official plats made in 1912 and 1928 show the burial sites of many of Wharton’s earliest families, city founders, and important figures, including Amanda Armstrong Watts, who died in 1924 and served as Wharton’s first public schoolteacher in 1880 and city postmistress in 1881. More than 140 veterans are buried there, including men and women who served in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam Conflict. The cemetery reflects careful planning and development, with features such as obelisks, brick cairns, decorated fencing, curbed plots, and many vertical stones. A 1931 marker shows that the city had a cemetery committee as early as 1906, and a committee continues to maintain the burial ground and preserve Wharton’s history for future generations.