Several prominent territorial pioneers, including Charles Christmas, Edwin Hedderly, and Philander Prescott are buried there.

It is the burial site for many of the city's early African-American residents and for many people who had ties to the abolitionist movement in Minnesota.

[3] The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 for its local significance in the theme of social history.

[4] It was nominated for reflecting both the city's pioneer era and an early historic preservation movement that saw the site restored from 1928 to 1936.

The Laymans seem to have gotten into the cemetery business by happenstance when, soon after they arrived, a Baptist pastor asked to bury his infant son, Carlton Cressey (or Cressy), on their land.

Civil War veteran Oscar Vaughn (16th United States Colored Infantry) is one of many, perhaps hundreds, of African Americans buried at Pioneers and Soldiers.

A striking feature of the cemetery is the absence of large monuments; only a relative handful stand as high as five feet (1.5 m).

Such stories are hard to find at Pioneers and Soldiers because so few markers can be read; most are marble, effaced long ago by time and the elements.

She uncovered many touching stories: August Smith and Ole Shay, workers killed in the Washburn A Mill explosion of 1878; Harry T. Hayward, hanged for the 1894 murder-for-hire of Kitty Ging; 25 infants from the Cody Hospital, a so-called "baby farm", who died there in 1908 and 1909.

The Friends of Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery maintains a searchable online database of burials.