The cemetery is the burial site of Daniel Boone, the famed frontiersman, and contains the graves of other famous Americans including seventeen Kentucky governors and a Vice President of the United States.

Brown enlisted other Frankfort civic leaders and on February 27, 1844, the Kentucky General Assembly approved the cemetery's incorporation.

Brown hired Scottish-born landscape architect Robert Carmichael to design the cemetery.

The cemetery is laid out in a style similar to Mount Auburn, with curving lanes, terraces and a circle of vaults.

[4] During the American Civil War, Frankfort Cemetery was used for the final resting place of soldiers on both sides of the conflict.