In 1878, John Armstrong Rylie donated land at this site for use as a school by settlers of this part of southeast Dallas County. The property came into service as a cemetery with the burial of Redden Allumbaugh in 1889. Since that time, more than 400 persons, including a number of Rylie Prairie community's earliest settlers and their descendants, have been interred here. The cemetery contains the burial of at least one Civil War veteran, Hartwell Bolin Cox. The Rylie Cemetery Association was founded in 1962 to maintain the graveyard.