Thomaston, established in 1872 as De Witt County's first railroad town, included a cemetery on land given in 1886 by John P. Wright, with an additional adjoining lot on the north donated in 1917 by his widow, Margaret Rankin Calliham Wright. The cemetery contains approximately 283 graves. Early graves were marked with wooden boards, which were replaced by concrete blocks about 1946. The earliest marked grave is that of an infant, George E. McDonald, who lived from October 1, 1870, to March 8, 1871. Also buried there are John P. Wright; his first wife, Mary Melvina Lockhart Wright; and his second wife, Margaret Rankin Calliham Wright. Headstones also mark the graves of veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The Thomaston Cemetery Association, formed in the 1930s, maintains the cemetery, and the original fence was replaced in the 1940s with a chain-link fence.