DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Pleasanton City Cemetery, out there in Atascosa County. Now settle in, because this one starts small — real small — and grows into something that stretches all the way from 1865 to the present day. It starts with a little boy.
Three years old. His name was Gustave B. Doak, and when his parents, Jonathan and Mary Elizabeth Doak — she was a Zumwalt before she married — when they buried that child on their property on the western outskirts of Pleasanton, I doubt they were thinking they were founding anything.
They were just grieving. That's how it begins. Not with a proclamation, not with a surveyor's stakes — with a family's grief on a piece of West Texas ground in 1865.
Friends came. Relatives came. And they kept coming back, because that's what communities do — they gather around their losses.
The place first showed up in the county deed records in 1884, when Jonathan Doak sold his property to a man with a name worth savoring — George Washington Marion Duck. Now Jonathan didn't let it all go. He held back one acre.
One acre, reserved for the cemetery. Whatever else changed hands that day, that ground stayed set apart. More land came in over the years, donated piece by piece, and the cemetery grew.
Walk through the older section today and you'll find the small graves — infants and children, a number of them — and if you need a reminder of how hard pioneer life really was out here, well, there it is in the quiet rows. The marker doesn't let you look away from that, and neither will I. But the cemetery holds other stories too.
Dr. James H. Lyons is buried here, born 1805, died 1881.
He served in the second Texas legislature, was a Mexican War veteran, and was twice mayor of San Antonio — a man who moved through a lot of Texas history in one lifetime. Alongside him rests Captain Hartwell Coleman Fountain, born 1810, died 1886, another Mexican War veteran. And then there's Graves Peeler — born 1886, died 1977 — who is credited with helping save the Longhorn cattle breed in the 1930s.
Think about that. The Longhorn, that icon, that image stamped on everything Texan — it needed saving once, and Graves Peeler was part of the reason it survived. He's here too, in this same ground where a three-year-old boy was laid to rest more than a century before him.
Over the years, people called this place the Doak Cemetery, and they called it Sandhill Cemetery — names that came and went like the families themselves. Today the Pleasanton Cemetery Association keeps it. But the ground remembers every name it ever carried, and every soul that was trusted to it, going all the way back to that first small grave in 1865.
What the marker says
Begun in 1865 as a family burial ground, the Pleasanton City Cemetery is a reflection of the history of the community from its earliest days. The first burial was that of three-year-old Gustave B. Doak, whose parents, Jonathan and Mary Elizabeth (Zumwalt) Doak, buried him on their property, which was then on the western outskirts of Pleasanton. Friends and relatives of the Doak family came to use the cemetery, which first appeared in county deed records when Jonathan Doak sold his property in 1884 to George Washington Marion Duck, reserving one acre for the cemetery. Additional donations of land over the years enlarged the acreage of the cemetery. Burials in the Pleasanton City Cemetery include a number of infants and children in the older section, reflecting the harshness of pioneer life in the community's early years. Also buried here are Dr. James H. Lyons (1805-1881), who served in the second Texas legislature, was a Mexican war veteran and twice mayor of San Antonio; Mexican War veteran captain Hartwell Coleman Fountain (1810-1886); Graves Peeler (1886-1977), who is credited with helping save the Longhorn cattle breed in the 1930s; and a number of local officials and community leaders. Known in the 19th century as the Doak Cemetery and as Sandhill Cemetery, the historic burial ground is maintained by the Pleasanton Cemetery Association. (2001)