The first permanet settler to this area was Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten of Spring Garden, Missouri, who came here in 1854. In 1865, with Milton Moore, he built a schoolhouse here which was named for his Missouri home. The building also served as a Chapel and Meeting Hall. Once the site of churches, a Grange, and a Justice of the Peace Court, Spring Garden declined in the 1870s because fire and the nearby development of Bedford. Only the pioneer burial ground at this site marks the location of the early settlement.