It appears in surveyor Edward Lloyd Thomas's original plan for the city.

The cemetery consists mostly of rectangular family plots bordered by iron fences or walls made of brick or granite, accessed by a main east-west corridor and perpendicular lanes.

It includes both simple and elaborate tombstones, some displaying Egyptian Revival or Gothic styles.

Its burials include more than 200 Confederate Army soldiers representing every state in the Confederacy.

[2] Thomas's own son was an early burial, as he died and was buried in the cemetery in 1828 while Thomas was amidst his work surveying, but apparently the grounds include earlier marked and unmarked graves of "'early traders, river people, and Indians.