In 1810, Dr. Oliver Bigelow of Cayuga County, New York, bought a 4,000-acre tract in Monroe Township from John Brown of Boone County, Kentucky, for $10,000, land that President John Adams had deeded to Brown for military service during the American Revolution. Bigelow laid out streets, alleys, a town square, and a cemetery, named the village Johnstown, served as the community's first medical doctor, and became the town's mayor. After his death on November 5, 1818, he was buried in Johnstown Cemetery, in the village's southwest corner. The cemetery became the final resting place of more than 300 early residents and veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, including Elijah Adams, Oliver Bigelow, M.D., Benjamin DeWolf, Caleb Hill, Abel Jewett, John Martin, Thomas Perkins, Moses Scovell, Esq., Peter Stevens, David Buxton, S.D. Grove, Emanuel Hoover, J.O. Adams, L.S. Bell, A.E. Cady, Samuel A. DeWolf, John Cummins, Joseph Evans, Noah Green, Samuel Martindale, and Israel Scovell.