Westgarthtown, sixteen kilometres north of Melbourne, was first settled by German and Wendish immigrants in March 1850. A site for a Lutheran church, school and cemetery was chosen soon after on a centrally located basalt rise. More than 165 years on, this small private cemetery remains in use today, with burials restricted to members of the Thomastown Lutheran congregation and descendants of the original settlers.

No burial register from the earliest years survives, but headstones, death certificates, undertakers' records, funeral notices and memorial cards together confirm more than 230 burials, dating back to an unidentified stillborn child interred by October 1850. The sixteen founding families were each allocated a numbered burial plot, laid out on a hand-drawn plan still kept at the site, and many of the settlers' final resting places lie within family groupings that have remained intact for over 170 years.

The cemetery's memorials record long, full lives as well as tragedy — illness, farm accidents, and the loss of infants and young children to the diseases of the era. Maintenance today is carried out by the City of Whittlesea; earlier generations of trustees and volunteers, including descendants of the founding families, cared for the grounds by hand for well over a century. The Westgarthtown Lutheran Cemetery, Church and Reserve are listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.