The Rice community was settled during the late 1860s and was named for William Marsh Rice, who donated land for the town's railroad station and later founded Rice University. In 1868, the community's citizens received land for a cemetery from the trustees of the William M. Rice interests. Originally located about one and one-half miles south, Rice Cemetery was moved to this site during the 1870s. The three original cemetery trustees, William D. Haynie, John A. Clopton, and Isaac B. Sessions, are buried in the oldest, or northern, section, which also contains many burial sites marked only with small rock fragments or similar material. The cemetery contains marked graves of numerous war veterans, including Joseph Calloway Bartlett, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence, as well as four Civil War participants, two Spanish-American War veterans, and numerous World War I and II veterans. Its tombstones also reflect the high infant mortality rate of the 1880s and the early twentieth-century flu epidemic, and it stands as a good example of a pioneer graveyard and an important part of Navarro County's recorded history.