Rounsavall Cemetery
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground has served residents of the Flat Creek community since the years shortly after the Civil War. It is named for the Rounsavall family, which settled in Henderson County around 1857. Arba Monroe Rounsavall (1843 – 1926), a businessman who owned and operated a gristmill and later a cotton gin, owned this property. He and his wife, Fannie Emeline (Carter) Rounsavall (c. 1835 – 1887), are among those buried here. Ownership of this land later passed onto their son, farmer and school board trustee James Monroe Rounsavall (1871 – 1952), who is also interred here with his wife, Clyde (also Clide) Oma (Knowles) Rounsavall (1871 – 1939). Other pioneering families represented here include the Carrolls and the Carters. The earliest marked burial in the cemetery is of Annie E. Carroll (1869 – 1875). However, it is believed that James Walling (1797 – c. 1866) is buried in an earlier, unmarked grave. Cemetery features include vertical stones, an entry arch, and benches. Those interred included farmers, community leaders, and veterans of conflicts dating to the Civil War. The cemetery property was deeded to Henderson County in 1946 and subsequently deeded back to the Rounsavall Cemetery Association, which organized in 1959 and continues to maintain the burial ground. Additional property was added in 1991 and 1996. Today, Rounsavall Cemetery serves as a chronicle of some of eastern Henderson county’s earliest pioneers, who through both joys and difficulties established the Flat Creek community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named for a family that settled Henderson County around 1857, this burial ground has served the Flat Creek community since just after the Civil War. Arba Monroe Rounsavall, who ran a gristmill and later a cotton gin, owned the land and lies here with his wife, as does his son James, a farmer and school trustee. Though the earliest marked grave dates to 1875, an unmarked pioneer burial may reach back to the 1860s among the vertical stones and entry arch.
Why it matters
The cemetery chronicles some of eastern Henderson County's earliest pioneering families, whose mills and farms anchored the Flat Creek community.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Arba Monroe Rounsavall
- · James Monroe Rounsavall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mars Community
Ben Wheeler, TX
Where two country roads crossed in Van Zandt County, the settlement of Mars flourished from the 1880s until about 1930. Early families like the Ammonses and Browns gave land for a church and school, and after farmers traded wheat for cotton, H. W. Brown's gin and grist mill drew a blacksmith shop and mercantile stores. A post office opened in 1891 — first called Acme, then renamed Mars — but a shrinking population closed it by 1907 and consolidated the school in 1916, leaving little behind.
Malakoff
Malakoff, TX
Malakoff began in the 1830s as the settlement of Caney Creek, centered on the grist mill of an Alabama widow, Jane Irvine, and later took the name Mitcham Chapel after an 1852 Methodist church. When a post office opened in 1855, residents chose Malakoff—after a Russian town made famous in the Crimean War. The railroad's arrival in 1880 shifted the town to a new site, and the 1912 discovery of lignite coal made mining Henderson County's largest industry.
Phalba
Phalba, TX
First called Snider Springs for John Snider, who bought the spring-fed land in 1853, this community grew after a road from Canton opened in 1858 and soon supported several businesses. To avoid confusion with another Snider Springs postal station, residents renamed the town Phalba after the daughter of a local gin owner. During the Depression, the Works Progress Administration built a cannery here, using spring water to run five steam canners for local and charitable food supply, and the farming and ranching community endures today.
Union Cemetery
Cross Roads, TX
Around 1860 David Thompson settled this stretch of Henderson County and put Wildcat Creek to work, running a grist mill and cotton gin that anchored a small community sometimes called Thompson's Mill. His sons later gave land for a Union Church and school, and by 1885 neighbors were burying their dead on the adjoining ground. The church, school and post office faded near the turn of the century, but the cemetery endured, kept up by a local association long after the mill community itself disappeared.