Methodism came to West Chester in 1810 when about a half-dozen individuals began meeting in the Court House. In the year 1816, the Methodist Episcopal Church of West Chester was established in the borough, many of its members coming from Shiloh, in Westtown Township, which had been established a decade earlier. That church was turned over to its Black members and subsequently became the Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The first Methodist burials in West Chester were in the churchyard on the north side of West Gay Street. On May 2nd, 1829, the trustees of the church purchased a lot of land from William and Hannah Everhart in what was then a section of the Borough of West Chester outside the main area of development that was not built up, on the south side of West Barnard Street, between New and Wayne Streets, for a burial ground for the congregation and "all other persons, inhabitants of . . . West Chester to bury their dead in, without cost, charge or expense." West Chester's Black Methodists, worshipping at the nearby Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, were also interred on the Union Street end of the lot.

Within a short time, other denominations – Baptist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal – would also open up their burial grounds on the same block, and by 1848 the whole row would be burial grounds, in this order: beginning at New Street and extending to Wayne: First, the Baptist; second, Presbyterian; third, Methodist, fourth and last, Episcopal. The lots were of nearly the same size and extended back from Barnard Street to an alley that divided the square.

The pressures of ongoing development ultimately made the land on which the burial grounds were established too valuable. Empowered by an act of legislature passed on March 25th, 1861, the congregation sold the former burial ground to John F. Ingram by a deed dated May 20th, 1864. The dead were subsequently taken up and removed, many to Green Mount Cemetery, where the church had purchased 78 lots on its north side. Black congregants buried on the Union Street end were removed to Chestnut Grove Cemetery.

Unfortunately, no records of interments were known to have been kept for this old burial ground, and many graves were unmarked. Many were not found when the work of removing them was first undertaken, and subsequent housing construction on the site exposed many bodies.