The Hart family has possessed the property since 1848, when John J. Hart and his first wife, Ellender "Nellie" Brown Hart, purchased it. According to family documents drafted in 1943 by their son J.M. Hart, Nellie chose the hilltop as her preferred burial ground, and after her death in 1860 she became the first person interred there. Many of her descendants and relatives were later buried in the cemetery. William J. Hart, the second person buried there, was a Confederate soldier who deserted during the war and was traveling to Washington D.C. to receive a pardon from the United States government when he was struck and killed by a train. Family oral history holds that the family opposed slavery and did not wholeheartedly support the rebellion by the southern states. Several sons of John J. Hart by his first wife, Nellie, and his second wife, Elizabeth Morgan, remained on or near the original property, and more than a century later many of their descendants were still living in the area, with several having only recently moved because of airport expansion.