The neglected cemetery's future brightened under new stewardship. In 1889 the association built a tenant house for the grounds supervisor. Judge Bowie's widow, Catharine Bowie, added two more acres, making a total of nine acres. Visible improvement came in 1894, when the board appointed an executive committee comprised of women. Under the leadership of Rebecca T. Veirs, the Rockville Union Cemetery Society cleared the grounds, planted trees, and transformed the burying ground from "a veritable wilderness into a spot of unusual beauty," according to the Montgomery County Sentinel.

Rockville Cemetery is a stunning example of the rural cemetery movement. This concept began in large Eastern American cities in the 1830s as a reaction to space and sanitation issues as well as the disruption caused by growth. Influenced by cemetery architects and landscape gardeners, the movement filtered down to small towns such as Rockville as a picturesque, safe burial ground that symbolized community unity. Curving roads, attractive plantings, three-dimensional monuments, an isolated yet accessible location, and family-controlled plots carried out the rural cemetery philosophy.

The roster of persons buried at Rockville Cemetery reads like a Who's Who of Montgomery County and Rockville. Examples are Upton Beall and E. Barrett Prettyman (clerks of the court), Walter "Big Train" Johnson (baseball great and County Commissioner), Judge and Mrs. Richard Johns Bowie (who lived next door), the Pumphrey family (carpenters and undertakers), veterans from the Revolutionary, Civil, Spanish-American, Korean, and Viet Nam Wars and World Wars I and II, and (for 35 years) author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. The earliest remaining stone marker is that of John Harding (1685-1752), long-time vestryman and owner of a nearby farm.

Peerless Rockville's tours of Rockville Cemetery include the gravesites of many of the people mentioned above.

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