Roller Ridge Churchyard Cemetery, Gateway, AR
N 36° 29.608 W 093° 55.582
15S E 417030 N 4039082
A cemetery that predates the town that it is near, in Benton County, AR
Waymark Code: WMJHBW
Location: Arkansas, United States
Date Posted: 11/19/2013
Views: 1
Oddly enough, neither the cemetery nor the church have a name directly on them. There is a sign about 1/4 mile west, along the main state highway, for Gateway Chapel, which is an Assembly of God church. The road to the church and cemetery is called Cemetery Road. To get the name of the cemetery, I took photos of some of the grave markers, then used
FindAGrave to locate the graves and, thus, the cemetery.
Although this cemetery is in Arkansas near Gateway, the name Roller Ridge is of a landmark a few miles north in Seligman, Missouri. So here is a little history of Seligman: Before the American Civil War, there was a settlement (not quite a town) just north of the Arkansas border named Herdsville or Hurdsville, after Adam Herd (or Hurd) an early settler. Later, but still before the Civil War, the settlement also became known as Roller Ridge. There are still many of the Roller family in the area. It became a town in 1880 when it was platted and renamed Seligman, after the financier of the railroad that was built through the new town.
Probably, the cemetery is named after the settlement, rather than the ridge itself. There are many graves that predate the existence of the town of Gateway, which came later. Although about 10% of the graves had no death date, the earliest recorded grave is from 1844.