On June 22, 1883, Mrs. Matt (Valborg) Hanhela became the first Finnish settler here to die, in childbirth, and she and her infant son were the first to be buried here. Their grave is unmarked and unknown. Matt Hanhela gave ten acres of land for this cemetery and for the church built in 1884, and in exchange forty homesteaders with oxen, horses, and plows broke fifty acres of prairie sod for him. Also buried here are fifty-five people whose wooden grave markers were destroyed in a prairie fire; their names are recorded in the church, but their final resting places are known only to God.