Pleasant Grove School & Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Wood County, there's a place called Pleasant Grove, and like a lot of good Texas stories, it starts with a piece of land and two generous souls. Henry and Mary Robinson donated the ground, back in the 1870s, for a community school and a cemetery.

Both of them, side by side. Now that tells you something about how people thought back then. You plan for the living, and you plan for the rest, all at once, on the same quiet patch of earth.

The school started as a one-room log schoolhouse. Just one room, holding whatever the community needed it to hold. But the area grew, and the buildings grew with it, one after another, each one a little larger than the last, keeping pace with the people putting down roots around it.

Then along came Professor D. Speer, a teacher at the school, and somewhere in the 1880s he looked out at those trees, breathed in that East Texas air, and gave the community its name. Pleasant Grove.

Fits, doesn't it. The school kept serving those families decade after decade, right up until 1956, when it was consolidated with the Winnsboro School District. That's a long run for a place that started as a single log room.

Now, just behind the schoolhouse, the cemetery has been keeping its own quiet record since 1879. That's the year of the oldest recorded burial, a man named Henry A. Brummett.

The cemetery is still active today, still tended by a cemetery association that makes sure this ground, given so freely by Henry and Mary Robinson all those years ago, is never forgotten. Pleasant Grove. The name stuck, the land endured, and somebody still shows up to take care of it.

That's about as good an ending as a community can ask for.

What the marker says

Land for a community school and cemetery was donated by Henry and Mary Robinson in the 1870s. A one-room log schoolhouse was replaced by several larger buildings as population in the area grew. Professor D. Speer, a teacher at the school, named the community and the school Pleasant Grove in the 1880s. The school was consolidated in 1956 with the Winnsboro School District. Located behind the schoolhouse, the cemetery dates to 1879 with the oldest recorded burial, that of Henry A. Brummett. Still active, the site is maintained by a cemetery association. (1997)