Prior to about 1870, southeastern Manitoba, including the Blumenort area, were hunting, fishing, and trapping grounds used by the nomadic Ojibway people. In 1871, the government began negotiating to the articles of the Ojibway land claims for this region of Manitoba. By 1874, the First Nations people of southeastern Manitoba had moved onto the Brokenhead and Rousseau River Reserves. By this time, the government surveyed the land and readied it for expansion by European settlers. The first non-nomadic settlers in Blumenort were German speaking Mennonite farmers from South Russia who arrived in the summer of 1874. By 1875, Blumenort consisted of 24 families.

The original settlement form was the traditional linear settlement of Plautdietsch speaking "Russian" Mennonites. In 1910, Blumenort was dismantled as the farmers disbursed to move onto the land they farmed. Barns and houses were relocated and within a few years little evidence of the former community remained, its street serving as a driveway for two farming families.

- from Wikipedia

Early Kleine Gemeinde Mennonite Funeral Customs:

Funerals were gatherings held in the afternoon, about two or three days following death. At first they may have been very simple devotional services held in the home of the deceased. Here passages from the Bible were read and many songs from the Big Song Book sung.

Once the villages were more established, funerals became more elaborate. They even became times of much getting together from faraway places. Preaching at funerals began around the turn of the century, but eulogies or obituaries which praised the deceased were strictly forbidden. The coffin was never brought inside the church. This practice was changed later only after serious opposition. Even then the bodies of excommunicated members were kept outside.

In the first year the dead were buried in scattered graves. By the fall of 1875, however, Blumenort had an established graveyard. Blumenhof, also had an official graveyard. Between 1889 and 1901, however, Blumenhof buried its dead in scattered graves. Neuanlage settlers buried their dead near the yards of the deceased until at least 1913. In all cases, no permanent grave markers were put up, and only scanty records of deaths kept. Several years after the old graveyard in Blumenort was no longer used, Isaac P. Loewen established the site of a dozen graves with iron markers. The markers, as well as Klaas F. Penner's burial records, were of invaluable help when the Centennial Monument was erected at the site of the old graveyard in 1974.

The following description of early coffins was given by Peter A. Plett at the Blumenort Cenntenial Service in 1974:

"The dead were prepared in a way entirely different from today. The casket was less of a box, more like a shallow trough from which one could nicely see the face from the side. I watched many times how they prepared the casket. In the bottom they made a mattress from jute bags filled with straw. Then they dressed the body in white cloth. The caskets for children were painted bright yellow, while caskets for the older folk were painted black. They were made of raw, unfinished wood. The covers slanted down from the middle so that the bodies fitted nicely underneath."

According to another source, flowers were sometimes picked and put into the coffin.

-from Blumenort: A Mennonite Community in Transition, 2nd Edition, by Royden Loewen, pp. 176-177.

The earliest burial in this cemetery was Jacob Barkman 1794-1875. The last burial was in 1919. Cairn on site lists 33 parents & their children.