On February 18th, 1878, 24-year-old Englishman John Henry Tunstall was murdered along a dusty trail 10 miles south of Lincoln, New Mexico. His death ignited the most violent period of the Lincoln County War and soon, he would not be the only casualty of the feud.

Tunstall’s friends decided to bury him behind his namesake store rather than in the town’s catholic cemetery. On February 21st, three days after his death, John Tunstall was laid to rest, with the intention that his family would eventually retrieve his body. To that end, local tradition maintains that Tunstall was buried in a lead-lined coffin to help preserve his body for future transport back to England.

A few short months later, Regulator Frank McNab joined Tunstall in the cemetery after being ambushed and gunned down by members of the Seven Rivers Warriors.

Then, on July 19th, 1878, the climactic 5-day battle in Lincoln came to a close, when the forces loyal to James Dolan burned the house of Alexander McSween to the ground and left him and three others lying dead in the dust. McSween and his law clerk, Harvey Morris, were buried beside Tunstall and McNab as well.

By the 1920s, the crude headstones marking the graves in the cemetery were completely gone, as was the fence around the burials. Alexander McSween’s widow noted in a letter that she could not remember exactly where the graves were. Similarly, members of John Tunstall’s family attempted to locate his body in the 1920s but were unable to.

The crosses and plaques that now mark the graves of John Tunstall and Alexander McSween were placed here by the Old Lincoln County Memorial Commission after they completed the restoration of the Tunstall Store and opened it as a museum in 1957.