Established in 1906, the cemetery was built around the resting place of Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, and holds more than 2,000 graves.

Amidst some kind of dispute with his neighbors in 1847, Johnson wrote, "If I should happen to die among the damn spirits that infest Greeneville, my last request before death would be for some friend I would bequeath the last dollar to some Negro to pay—to take my dirty stinking carcass after death out on some mountain peak, and there leave it to be devoured by the vultures and wolves or make a fire sufficiently large to consume the smallest particle that it might pass off and smoke and ride upon the wind in triumph over the God-forsaken and hell-deserving, money-loving, hypocritical, backbiting, Sunday-praying scoundrels of the town of Greeneville.

According to Robert W. Winston's Plebian and Patriot (1928), "Though little given to sentiment, he pointed out this spot to a friend, saying that there he wished to rest and to take his final sleep.

She further pushed in 1900 to make the site a national cemetery, so that instead of the Johnson family maintaining it, the federal government would.

[5][7] At the time of Johnson's death in 1875, a Knoxville paper wrote that the burial place was called Johnson's Hill, located about .5 mi (0.80 km) southeast of town, and could be seen "the right of the railroad as you approach Greeneville from the west.

[5] The 26 ft (7.9 m)-tall monument was made in Philadelphia and was paid for by the three surviving Johnson children, Martha, Mary, and Frank.

One newspaper account of Andrew Johnson's life, published in 1891, stated "There is something singularly enigmatic in the epitaph, for no one ever knew precisely what is meant by 'His faith in the people never wavered.