The Chester County Poor (or Alms) House was established in 1800. During its long history it went by many names — first as the Chester County Alms House, then as the Chester County Home, then the Chester County Institutional District, then the Embreeville State Hospital, and finally, until its closure in 1997 as the Embreeville State Center — there were three cemeteries located at the site.

The oldest cemetery was located on a triangular plot of land on the West Bradford side of the township line, near the site of "Indian Hannah" Freeman's original stone marker, northwest of Conley Drive. This cemetery saw its first burial around 1802 and was used throughout the 19th century.

During the mid-1890s, construction at the County Home, including a new Hospital for the Insane and a water pipeline, necessitated the laying out of a new cemetery. This second cemetery was established several hundred yards west of the old plot, on the West Bradford township line and at the corner of the County's property. Many remains were removed to this new plot as they were uncovered during construction activities. This small plot would eventually come to hold at least 69 interments, according to the numbered stones there. Though it was restored by Embreeville Staff and other volunteers upon the urging of First Lady of Pennsylvania Jinny Thornburgh in the late 1980s, today it is overgrown, and largely inaccessible, and sits in the woods on the edge of a corn field.

The third and most familiar cemetery was laid out in 1908 or shortly after, when Chester County purchased the 189-acre farm of John Hoopes across the Brandywine. This cemetery is located across the railroad along a well-used trail in the ChesLen Preserve. It is marked at its corners by four tall trees and is surrounded by a chain-link fence. The last burials in this third cemetery are believed to have occurred in the late 1940s.

In both the second and third cemeteries, the gravestones have only numbers on them. It is said that though the facility once had records of burials on its grounds, and an index which associated the numbered tombstones with the occupants' identities, both have since been lost, either being disposed of when the facility closed or lost in a flood in Harrisburg with other records of the Embreeville State Hospital.

Because of the complex history of the Embreeville site, there is no known way to differentiate with any certainty the burials in each burial ground — or to associate the numbered graves to individual's names. The known burials in all three cemeteries at the complex are listed in this single cemetery entry.

Note: The County of Chester is also known to have buried the poor and others in its charge in Bradford Cemetery in nearby Marshallton. These interments are recorded in that cemetery's records.