While nineteenth-century sources attest 5,000 burials within the cemetery, a recent transcription lists only 1,287 individual known graves.

In 1837, Job and Ann Halstead conveyed a parcel of 0.59 acres (0.24 ha) to the town's Presbyterian church "for a place of interment of the dead free for all persons desirous of Burying upon the said lot of land".

[2] In that year, the entire graveyard was enclosed by a stone wall (previously it was bound by "wooden coping").

The gates were decorated with "medallions, bearing a bas-relief of Father Time with scythe and hourglass" of which one of the two survive.

[2] The burial ground contains the graves of the members of several families who were involved in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century settlement and growth of Newton and the surrounding areas.

[2][8][9] The historic district includes 56 contributing structures and properties over 17.20 acres located on Jonathan Hampton's surveyed town plot.