--Photos by Harold Beaver, 2017
Roosevelt
Cemetery
Roosevelt (White County), Arkansas
List updated: April 8, 2019
Legal description: NE, SW, NE, Sect. 18, T10N, R6W
Earliest listed grave: 1853 – Mary Ann Siler
Last listed grave: Active Cemetery
Arkansas Archaeological Survey site #3WH0609
G.P.S. location: 619923 - 3928765
Number of marked graves: 800 +
Unmarked graves: Approximately 75
Contact: Janice Guinn, (501) 728-3232
Dwight “Buck” Stephens, (501) 728-4383 or (501) 284-9334
The Roosevelt Cemetery is located five miles south of Pleasant Plains, Arkansas, and 20 miles north of Judsonia,
Arkansas, with a Judsonia address. It is adjacent to Roosevelt Missionary Baptist Church on State Highway 157 in
White County in north central Arkansas. The Roosevelt Cemetery began to be a public burial ground in 1848. It
was originally known as Bagley or Bagler Cemetery, but the name evolved to Roosevelt Cemetery when a U. S.
Post Office was established in 1902 to serve the Roosevelt community. This rural cemetery is a public cemetery
with graves primarily of local residents and former residents with family connections to the cemetery. On the first
Saturday of August each year a ‘Roosevelt Cemetery Homecoming’ takes place and it includes a potluck ‘dinner
on the grounds’. In the early days, this event was often referred to as ‘the cemetery working day’ when everyone
came early with their shovels, hoes, and rakes and the entire site was scraped clean of all vegetation and each
grave was ‘mounded up’. During the 1950s the graves (almost all of them anyway) were leveled and grass was
planted so the entire cemetery could be maintained in its current ‘park-like’ condition. That periodic maintenance
requires funds to hire it done. Toward that end a Cemetery Maintenance Fund was established whereby interested
persons could make contributions to replenish the tax deductible fund. Most of those funds are received during the
time leading up to and then on the Cemetery Homecoming Day. Those contributions are always sincerely
appreciated by those responsible for managing the maintenance.