Peal-Pleasant Valley Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out in Hays County, tucked behind a fence on 1.7 acres, there's a cemetery that holds twenty-three known graves. Not a famous cemetery.

Not a well-traveled one. But the kind of place that, if you stop and listen, will tell you everything about what it took to plant a life in this country. The story starts with one man.

John Bennett Peal, born in North Carolina in 1834. He made his way to Texas before 1885, and in 1858 he married a woman named Mary Webb. By 1872, the Peals had set their sights on Hays County, where they purchased 1,920 acres from a man named T.N.

Waul. Nineteen hundred and twenty acres. That's not a farm.

That's a statement of intention. They built their house on a hill. And that hill, on account of the family's strong Baptist faith, came to be known as Missionary Ridge.

Now that's the kind of nickname that follows a family around, and the Peals seemed to wear it just fine. In 1875, the Peals helped establish the Pleasant Valley Baptist Church. Two years later, when the Valley Ford School was created, the church building did double duty and housed it too.

Then in 1883, Peal donated five acres of land for a proper one-room schoolhouse. The school took root and became the center of activity for that whole section of the Blanco Valley. Children came to that schoolhouse from families with names that are worth saying aloud: Burchett, Edwards, George, Haster, Pape, Pearl, Sachtleben, Schubert, and Shook.

Different backgrounds, different stories, all of them finding their way to the same valley. What they built there, over time, were lifelong friendships, partnerships, and marriages. The kind of bonds that hold a community together out in a rural stretch where there isn't much else to hold it.

And the community did remain rural, serving the local needs of those few area families. The Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, the Valley Ford School, and the Peal House on its ridge were the heartbeat of it all. John Bennett Peal died in 1888.

His name, and the names of many of those families, live on in the cemetery that has gone by several names over the years: Valley Ford, Pleasant Valley, Burchett/Peal. It's known today as Peal-Pleasant Valley Cemetery. The earliest grave belongs to Marthe A.E.

George, born in 1849, died in 1881. She was buried here before there was even a proper name settled on the place. The foundations of the church and the school are gone now, mostly.

Those twenty-three graves and those two sets of foundations are what remain of an entire community. That's the thing about a rural cemetery. It doesn't ask for your attention.

It just holds the names, and waits for someone to stop long enough to read them.

What the marker says

Twenty-three known graves lie within the fence of the present 1.7-acre peal-Pleasant Valley cemetery. The burials along with the foundations of the Pleasant Valley Baptist church and Valley Ford school are the only remnants of an early Hays county community. Settlement began with John Bennett Peal (1834-1888), a North Carolina native who arrived in Texas before 1885. In 1858, Peal married Mary Webb and in 1872, the Peals settled in Hays county, where they purchased 1,920 acres from T.N. Waul. Built on a hill, the Peal House would be known as missionary ridge because of the family’s strong Baptist faith. The Peals helped to establish Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in 1875. The church building also house the Valley Ford School when it was created two years later. In 1883, peal donated five acres of land for a one-room schoolhouse. The community remained rural serving the local needs of the few area families. The school became the center of activity for this section of the Blanco Valley. Children attending the school came from the Burchett, Edwards, George, Haster, Pape, Pearl, Sachtleben, Schubert, and Shook families. These families, many from different backgrounds, forged bonds through lifelong friendships, partnerships and marriages. Several of these names are represented through the graves at Peal-Pleasant Valley Cemetery. The earliest grave is that of Marthe A.E George (1849-1881). The cemetery has been known variously as Valley Ford Pleasant Valley and Burchett/Peal. This rural cemetery provides a final resting place for several pioneering families who forged a life for themselves and their descendants in Texas. Historic cemetery -2019 / Name and Date Plaque Circa 1881