Benjamin Thomas Ellis, born in 1825 in Alabama to John I. and Elizabeth Ann Ellis, moved with his family to Texas in 1839, and by 1850 he was living with his wife, Martha E. Ellis, and their young daughter on the land around this site. Family oral history holds that the cemetery began as a family graveyard on land that was part of the Benjamin T. Ellis survey. According to oral history, among the first people buried there were Benjamin Ellis, Jr., who died in 1843, and his wife, Hannah Ellis, who died in 1861, the parents of John I. Ellis. The earliest marked grave is that of their daughter Nancy M. Milliken, who died in 1862 after the birth of her sixth child, and her husband, John C. Milliken, a member of the Texas militia during the Civil War, died in 1868 and was buried beside her. Benjamin T. Ellis, who also served in the Texas militia during the Confederacy, was buried nearby. In 1890, J.S. and Ellen L. Burton deeded Rockland Cemetery to the trustees of the newly organized Rockland Church. The congregation established a church and school building in front of the cemetery in 1892, and the site became a community social center. It served until about 1900, when the building was moved two miles west to be closer to students' homes. Rockland Common School District #13 was created in 1911 and operated until 1939, when students were transferred to Lovelady schools, with official consolidation following in 1947. The Union church continued to hold services in the building until 1942. Enlarged in 1992 by a two-acre land donation, the cemetery remains in use as a chronicle of early pioneers.