This area of Denton County was known as Holford's Prairie in the mid-19th century, named for brothers John and James Halford, pioneer settlers who obtained 640 acres of land as members of the Peters Colony. Basdeal W. Lewis platted the town of Lewisville in 1853. Thomas Morgan Smith and Elizabeth A. Smith purchased 318 acres of land here in 1859 and sold two and one-half acres of their farmland to the Lewisville Masonic Lodge in 1881 for the establishment of a community cemetery. The site had been used as a burial ground since 1862, when the Smiths' 20-year-old son, James J. Smith, died and was buried on the family farm, and his is the earliest marked grave in the cemetery. Gravestones here bear the names of pioneer Denton County families including Herod, Sherrill, Clayton, Skillern, Cobb, Jenkins, Temple, Bourland, Hamilton, Fenlaw, Oliver, and Fox. John Moore Fox and Ann Eliza Fox buried six children here between 1863 and 1882, reflecting the often harsh conditions of pioneer life. Local oral history suggests that some unmarked graves are those of former slaves of the Julius Kane Fox family. The Smith Cemetery Association, organized in 1950 to maintain the graveyard, purchased the site from the Masonic lodge in 1972. With more than 400 marked graves and an unknown number of unmarked ones, the cemetery remains in use by the community and by descendants of the pioneer families buried here.