George McGarrah, a member of the Peters Colony, brought his family to this area in the 1840s after living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he is credited with helping build many of that city's historic structures that still survive. His wife died in Arkansas in 1838 while giving birth to their daughter, Harriett, and McGarrah and his three children established a new home near this site, where he later married Sarah Ford. McGarrah set aside one-seventh of an acre on his land for a family cemetery that contains ten graves, and he was the first person buried there in 1879. The next burials in the family plot were two of his grandchildren, George W. Ottenhausen and Mattie A. Ottenhausen, the children of Harriett McGarrah and her husband Henry Ottenhausen. Sarah Ford McGarrah was buried next to her husband in 1896. Also buried there are Harriett McGarrah Ottenhausen, Henry Ottenhausen, and his mother, Christina Ousenkoff Ottenhausen, along with three unmarked burials, one of them that of a slave.