John Merrifield (1792 - 1873) was the patriarch of a Kentucky family who migrated to the Dallas County area in the late 1840s. In 1851 he purchased a farm here which included this site. It was first used as a cemetery in the late 1860s. The only marked graves are those of Merrifield and his second wife Elizabeth (1802-69). The unmarked gravesites here are estimated to number over twenty. As the burial ground of a pioneer area family, the Merrifield Cemetery provides a vital link to those who were among the first to open the Dallas region to settlement.