Columbia Cemetery was begun in the 1830s on land given by Rev. Edmund Talbot, after the earlier Omussee Creek Church Cemetery a mile southwest was abandoned. A public meeting house that served as Columbia Baptist Church was built on the grounds in 1834, and Richard P. and Sarah McGriff later gave an early addition on the north end. In 1859, Nathaniel Ferris Oakley built a new Baptist church there that remained until 1885. The cemetery expanded north in 1882 with land from Henry C. and Elizabeth McGriff, gained a summer house at the entrance and a perimeter wrought iron fence in 1883, added land to the west from Nora Davis Campbell in 1919, extended south to Church Street with land from the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1932, and expanded west again in 1983 through a gift from the family of Marion L. and Viola H. Oakley. Buried there are some of Columbia's first settlers and many people who shaped the town's history, and the grounds contain many elaborate headstones. The oldest marked grave is that of William J. McGriff, an infant who died on June 10, 1839. Those interred include many Confederate soldiers, among them three members of the Columbia Blues killed at the Battle of Seven Pines in Virginia, as well as veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, including some who gave their lives in service. Former state, county, and town officials are buried there, along with Captain Callie French Tomlinson of Mississippi and Ohio River showboat fame, the first woman in the U.S. to earn both steamboat pilot and captain licenses, who is honored in two national halls of fame. In 2013, it became the first cemetery in Houston County to be listed in the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register.