[1] The cemetery contains 153 graves of early Dutch settlers of Cow Neck (as today's Port Washington was then known), revolutionary war patriots, and prominent leaders of North Hempstead, buried from 1737 to 1892.

[1] The 1-acre (4,000 m2) burial ground was separated from Rapelje's farm and sold in July, 1786 to members of the Onderdonk, Schenck, Rapaeje, Hegeman and Dodge families.

[1] Eighteenth-century markers are sandstone detailed with "soul effigies", a tripartite lobed top with a face in the center and other decoration in the wings.

[1] By the end of that century and the beginning of the next, the lobed top was plain, the inscriptions began with "In Memory" or "In Memoriam", and there are at least two marble headstones with the willow-and-urn motif common in neoclassical gravestones from the 1820s on.

It was designated a Town of North Hempstead Landmark in 1985 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.