The first tract of land in Oak Hill Cemetery was located in what is now the southeast corner and was approximately one acre in size.

[3] The second tract of land, north and west of the original section, was deeded to the Lewistown Cemetery Association in 1865 by Reuben R. and Ruth McDowell.

Among them are some of the early settlers of the Lewistown area, including members of the Beadles, Davidson, Phelps, Ross, and Walker families.

The gravesites of these individuals are indicated by numbered markers that are located beside the corresponding gravestones and are shaped in the silhouette of Edgar Lee Masters.

In a central part of the cemetery there is a Civil War memorial that includes a pair of sandstone columns (the so-called "Lincoln pillars"[2]) that were quarried from the Spoon River bottom.

This was not the poet William Cullen Bryant, but a distant relative who was the inspiration for the character "Percy Bysshe Shelley" in the Spoon River Anthology.