Established in 1845, Providence Cemetery served as a burial ground for the congregation of Providence Primitive Baptist Church, which was organized in 1842 by William J. Caudle and his wife, Sarah Daffern Caudle. In the 1840s, churches provided both spiritual and social interaction and also maintained law and order within their congregations, with Sunday church even seeing "trials" using the congregation as judge and jury. Dinner-on-the-ground offered an eagerly anticipated day of escape from a hard life, and because churches were scarce, preachers were circuit riders serving four or more churches. Much of the cemetery was established from donated lands, and the first recorded donors were William J. and Sarah Caudle and T.M. and Harriet Harton in 1871. The cemetery is estimated to contain more than 1,400 graves, though the exact number is unknown. Many people used petrified wood, colorful glass bottles, or other items as markers, and weather and time have washed away many of these. Other gravestone materials in the cemetery include granite, cast iron, funeral company marker, limestone, marble, and Italian ground marble resin, while concrete curbing was used in the earlier years to mark graves. Its features include benches, a flagpole, handcrafted local castings, obelisks, a bronze plaque, and an angel statue, and black wrought iron fencing covers the south side with east and west gates, red brick pillars, and black cast iron floral gates created by a local welder craftsman. Many veteran gravestones are found there.