Forest Park Cemetery was first incorporated in 1897 by a group of wealthy Troy businessmen under the Forest Park Cemetery Corporation, though based on older gravestones, the cemetery had apparently been in use since at least 1856. The original area chosen for the cemetery occupied over of farmland in what was then rural Brunswick. Meant to outgrow and even outclass Troy's Oakwood Cemetery, it was originally designed by Garnet Baltimore, the first African-American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Baltimore planned on the cemetery to offer visitors a park-like experience, complete with statuary, winding trails, and a large receiving tomb near the entrance.