1886: Florida mortgage and investment included the cemetery in the town plan .

1887: First Burial, Tom Booth, March 1887

1903: John Hamilton Gillespie transfers the cemetery to the City of Sarasota

May 22, 1903: L. H. Cunliff purchases the first burial plot for $15.00

1910: Frank Higel donates iron gate

1911: fencing is erected to keep out cows

1913: Sarasota Women�s Club plants eucalyptus trees and C.W. Chapman donated cabbage palms. Shell path is curbed with cement. Bertha Palmer donates the central Pergola

1925: The Manatee Memorial Park opens in Oneco, Fl, providing another option for burials in the area. Some exhumed family members from Rosemary Cemetery due to its distressed condition and moved them to Manatee Memorial Park.

1990: Pergola rebuilt and cemetery cleaned up.

January 2002: Survey of the cemetery completed

2003: Added to the National Registry of Historic Places as Site #03001143.

Rosemary Cemetery was privately owned from the time it was established in 1886 until 1903, when it was deeded to the town of Sarasota. It was used by most of Sarasota's population until 1925, when a public cemetery was established in the nearby town of Oneco. Although that new memorial park became a more popular cemetery for many Sarasotans, Rosemary Cemetery remained an active cemetery and occasional burials still take place there.

Rosemary Cemetery is significant because it is the final resting place for many of the town's pioneers, and its grave markers and attendant funerary art and architecture reflect the community's social history. The collection of markers also demonstrates the various styles and materials used to commemorate the dead in the central Gulf Coast region of Florida during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of particular interest are a variety of hand-cast concrete markers and a small number of early 20th century marble markers with designs influenced by the late Victorian period. The cemetery's original plan was centered around a pergola contributed to the community by Mrs. Potter Palmer.