The cemetery at Derry has its origins in the early part of the nineteenth century. In 1822, a Black man named London Derry and his wife, Elizabeth sold a ½-acre plot of land in East Fallowfield Township to Thomas Williams, John Beckett and Abraham Jackson, trustees of the Union Society of Coloured People, for the erection of a meeting house for the members of the local African Union Church, and for a place to bury their dead. The meeting became known as Derry after its former owner. Though identically named, the meeting has an entirely different etymology from the nearby Derry Meeting of the Society of Friends to the south, which was a colloquial shortening of "Londonderry" after the township in which it is located.

In the 1860s, a schism developed in the African Union Church, and Derry became a denomination of the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1869, under the leadership of Reverend William Hutchinson, the denomination relocated to a corner at Sixth and Merchant Streets four miles away in Coatesville. After his death, the church was named the Hutchinson Memorial Union American Methodist Episcopal Church in his honor. The denomination still maintained the plot at Derry, sometimes called Fallowfield, as its burying ground. The church subsequently moved to a new location at 825 East Chestnut Street in Coatesville in 1909, and it has been there ever since.

In 1972, the old cemetery was seized by the Chester County Sheriff after the church failed to pay property taxes on the parcel, and it was sold. In the 1980s, grave robbers stole as many as six tombstones and robbed six graves, most likely looking for Civil War artifacts. Today, the plot is privately owned, and is largely overgrown and not regularly maintained.