Rose Hill Cemetery
Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Wild roses covered this hillside when settlers from Tennessee camped here in 1866. The land was first used as a burial site after a son of W. R. Dickey died on Aug. 14, 1866. Dr. James R. Stovall, leader of the pioneers, later donated the property. The farming community of Rose Hill grew up around the cemetery and combination store, school, and church building that stood nearby. Rose Hill Cemetery Association, formed in 1913, cared for the graves after the village disappeared in the late 1930s. Descendants of early residents, led by Walter Wilson, created a perpetual care trust fund in 1973.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Tennessee settlers camped on this hillside in 1866 the slopes were thick with wild roses, and the land became a burial ground after a settler's son died that August. Dr. James R. Stovall, who led the pioneers, later gave the property, and a small farming community of store, school, and church grew up around the graves. The village faded away by the late 1930s, but a care association and, later, a perpetual trust kept the cemetery tended.
Why it matters
Rose Hill is the surviving heart of a vanished farming village, the kind of place that outlived the community it once served.
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Related people
- · James R. Stovall
- · W. R. Dickey
- · Walter Wilson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Old Graveyard (Pioneer Cemetery)
Terrell, TX
This small burying ground, also called the Irvine Family Cemetery, predates the founding of Terrell by more than two decades. Its first grave, dug in 1851 for young Robert Alexander, lay on land held by the pioneer Irvine family, and it gathered the family, their neighbors, and descendants—many of them founders of the community. Now ringed by the city, it holds several unmarked graves and saw its last known burial in 1956.
Lawrence Cemetery
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When the Texas and Pacific Railroad pushed through in 1873, a group of investors formed a colony association to promote the new town of Lawrence, named for one of their directors. The town's cemetery began the same year with the burial of a seven-month-old child and has since grown to hold more than four hundred graves, many of them the area's earliest pioneers.
Frank Reaugh
Terrell, TX
Frank Reaugh (1860–1945) fell in love with wild range cattle as a boy on his family's Kaufman County cotton farm, where trail herds passed close by in the 1870s. Working his way through art study in St. Louis and Europe, he settled in Dallas in 1890 and became the great pastel chronicler of the Texas Longhorn, the western trails, and the open range just as they were vanishing. His paintings now hang in Austin, Dallas, and beyond.
Robert A. Terrell
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Robert Adams Terrell wandered from Tennessee through Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana before reaching the Republic of Texas around 1840. As a surveyor he located headright land grants across North Texas—paid in vast tracts of land—served in Republic expeditions, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. The town of Terrell rose on land he had surveyed and took his name.