Notable burials in the cemetery include founders and early residents of the Plymouth Colony, and 19th-century politician Daniel Webster.

The cemetery, now owned and maintained by the town, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

In that year a parcel of land including the cemetery site was granted to William Thomas, a Welsh immigrant who had also arrived in 1630.

Thomas donated land to the town for the establishment of a burying ground, adjacent to where its first meeting house was erected.

Edward Winslow died during an English military expedition in the Caribbean in 1655, and was buried at sea.