Around 1856, Richard (Dick) Aaron Belew and Mary Jane Belew, their five children, and 39 other families traveled by wagon from Tennessee to Denton County and stopped on a hill in the area later known as the Belew Schoolhouse Settlement, part of the A.G. Stapp Survey north of Aubrey. A school soon opened in a log cabin there and was later used as a church, and the cemetery was located nearby. In October 1880, citizens of the Belew Schoolhouse Community purchased the first piece of land from Richard Aaron Belew for use as a public graveyard. More than 70 red sandstone rocks mark many of the early graves in this original 2.8 acres. By the early 1900s, Belew Cemetery had become the main burial ground for the Aubrey area. In 1902, Kate Hodges, Mary L. (Mollie) Henderson, Ola Price, Bettie Catlett, Mary Caddell, and Nora McIntosh organized a Ladies Cemetery Society to raise funds for the cemetery's care. To buy additional land, the society held a community Thanksgiving dinner, and for 85 years this successful fundraiser helped support added land purchases in 1903, 1962, and 1983, as well as construction of a sexton's house in 1906 and a pavilion in 1910. Later renamed the Belew Cemetery Association, the group's first directors represented nearby rural school districts. Early settlers, association founders, and veterans from the Civil War to the Gulf War are buried here, and the cemetery continues to honor the area's heritage and ancestors.