William Balch (1804-1870) migrated to Texas from Illinois in 1848 with his wife and family to receive land from the Robertson land district, and in 1851 he, his sons, and his grandson arrived in Alvarado to mark their 320-acre claim about one mile northwest of town. Balch purchased land from the Ira Glaze land grant and donated this site for a cemetery. The first recorded burial was Wallis Austin in October 1853, followed by Balch’s daughter Rebecca Balch McClure Parker in November 1853. By the end of the Civil War, five additional pioneer women from two families—Panina Ralls, Phoebe Balch, Patsy Myers, Elizabeth Myers, and Cynthia Myers—had been buried there, forming the cemetery’s core. Several Mexican nationals who came to supply the Mexican army with wheat in 1862 during Mexico’s war with France are buried in the west central section. Also interred there are many of the area’s pioneer families and their descendants, veterans of the Civil War, and three local outlaws. A yellow fever epidemic in 1883 and a smallpox outbreak in 1889-1890 filled much of the cemetery’s available space, leading to the establishment of another cemetery on College Hill.