Rowena was originally laid out by Paul J. Baron in 1897. A Santa Fe Railroad section house known as Rowena Station had been established in the area in 1888, but the post office officially denied that name because it too much resembled Ravenna in Fannin County. In what was dubbed Baronsville, Baron and his wife, Mary, established one of the first residences. As the area grew in its initial years, the town’s name remained undetermined. When Gustav Schuhmann became postmaster in 1900, he named his office Bolf, after land agent John Bolf. Confusion followed because the post office was named Bolf in the town of Baronsville at the station known as Rowena. The Barons officially changed the town’s name to Rowena in 1904. Many early twentieth-century inhabitants were of German and Czech descent, and the town became a trading point for those involved in the region’s agricultural industry. The first one-room school building, known as Cemetery Hill School, stood about a half mile southeast of town near Rowena’s cemetery, then moved closer to the center of town in 1904 and by 1908 had grown from one room to four. German Evangelical, Catholic, Baptist, and Moravian Bohemian Presbyterian churches were all established during the first decade of the twentieth century. Rowena’s population was estimated at around 800 in 1930, but had slowly declined to around 450 in 2000. Social groups such as the Rowena Lions Club remain active in community upkeep. Rowena is also remembered as the birthplace of bank robber Bonnie Parker of the Barrow Gang.