In a 1954 interview with the “Painesville Telegraph,” long-time resident Jeannette Munson recalled her father telling her when many of the early Mentor residents returned to visit their former homes in New England, they noticed that the churchyard burial plots were somewhat neglected and overgrown with briers. Since the forward-looking settlers didn’t want this same situation to happen in Mentor, they began thinking about creating a cemetery that would be kept up.

And so, in 1854 a Cemetery Association was established to purchase ten acres of land situated in the Jackson lot and lying on the road from Amasa Cobb’s corners to David Hopkins’ corners for the consideration of Four Hundred Dollars. Amasa Cobb, who died on March 16, 1855, was the first to be buried there.

Prior to 1854, the burial site was located on property deeded to the schools at Mentor Avenue and Center Street. In 1858 and 1859, William S. Kerr, the Treasurer of the Village School Board, was instructed to pay residents for lots they owned on this property. The plan was to move the burying grounds to the new Mentor Cemetery, which allowed the School Board to build a two-story brick schoolhouse on the site of the former burying grounds.