Pleasant Grove Cemetery
Coryell County, Coryell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The 1850 U.S. census lists 94 soldiers at Fort Gates, including Irish-born Hugh Sheridan. After Fort Gates closed in March 1853, Sheridan and other families settled on farms in the Leon River lowlands. They established the Pleasant Grove community, likely named for the groves of post oak trees scattered in the area. Sheridan, Nimrod Brown, William B. Powell, and the Worthington, Traller, Cummings, Price and Hall families were among the first landowners. John Marshall Brown, son of Nimrod Brown, was appointed trustee of Pleasant Grove School District No. 26 by Coryell County Judge S. B. Raby in Nov. 1877. William B. Powell donated land for a school in 1883, stipulating that religious services be permitted in the building. The school enrolled 41 students in 1902. Pleasant Grove residents attended the 1904 farmers education and co-operative union in Mound, and had a democratic club in 1908. The school operated until 1910, when Pleasant Grove, Farmers Branch and Branchville schools consolidated to form the Ewing school district. A community burial ground was established on the farm of Walter T. Worthington. The earliest dated gravestone is for Catherine Janes, who died in 1867 at age 74. Dozens of burials had occurred by 1899, when Worthington deeded two acres “to be used by Pleasant Grove community as a graveyard forever and I also sell to said community the fence as it now stands on the north side of this tract of land, for $25.00.” Notable burials include military veterans from the Civil War through World War II, and an unusual inscription for Joseph H. Taller noting he was born at sea in 1832. Fort Hood provides maintenance for this still-active cemetery, which is the last remaining historic resource of the Pleasant Grove community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After Fort Gates closed in 1853, soldiers like Irish-born Hugh Sheridan and families such as the Browns and Powells settled the Leon River lowlands and named their community for its groves of post oak. They built a school district, held farmers' union meetings and a Democratic club, and buried their dead in ground Walter Worthington deeded in 1899 "to be used...as a graveyard forever." The graves range from an 1867 burial to veterans of every war from the Civil War through World War II.
Why it matters
Pleasant Grove shows how a disbanded frontier fort seeded a farming community whose cemetery is now its last surviving trace on the land.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years around 1850, the Texas frontier along the Leon River was still a raw edge of American settlement. Texas had only recently joined the Union, and the U.S. Army planted a string of forts across its central hill country to guard scattered farms and travel routes. Fort Gates was one of these outposts, and the 1850 census counted more than ninety soldiers stationed there — men from across the country and, in Hugh Sheridan's case, from as far away as Ireland.
This was the Early Republic and antebellum era giving way, over the decades that followed, to Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. A soldier's tour of duty was temporary, but the land around a fort often outlasted the garrison. When the Army decided a post was no longer needed, the soldiers mustered out — and some of them looked at the country they had been guarding and decided to stay.
That is what happened here. When Fort Gates closed in March 1853, the fertile lowlands of the Leon River were suddenly open to men who already knew the ground. Central Texas in these years was a place of small farms, hand-built schools, and slowly thickening community, where families put down roots one deed and one fence line at a time.
People & events
The story of Pleasant Grove begins with the closing of Fort Gates. Hugh Sheridan, Irish-born and listed among the fort's soldiers, was one of those who traded a garrison bunk for a farm. Alongside him came Nimrod Brown, William B. Powell, and the Worthington, Traller, Cummings, Price, and Hall families — the first landowners of a community they named, most likely, for the groves of post oak scattered across the countryside.
What they built next tells you what mattered to them. In November 1877, Nimrod Brown's son, John Marshall Brown, was appointed trustee of Pleasant Grove School District No. 26 by the county judge. A few years later, in 1883, William Powell gave land for a school — with the thoughtful condition that religious services also be allowed in the building, so that one modest structure could serve both mind and spirit. By 1902 the school counted forty-one pupils. Residents gathered for a farmers' education and cooperative union meeting in nearby Mound in 1904 and organized a Democratic club by 1908.
And they buried their dead here. The community's graveyard grew on Walter T. Worthington's farm, its earliest dated stone belonging to Catherine Janes, who died in 1867 at seventy-four. By 1899 dozens of graves had gathered, and Worthington formally deeded two acres to be used "as a graveyard forever," selling even the existing fence to the community for twenty-five dollars. Among those laid to rest were veterans of every American war from the Civil War through World War II — and Joseph H. Taller, whose stone carries the unusual note that he was born at sea in 1832.
Its place in the American story
Pleasant Grove is a small window onto a very large American pattern: how the military frontier seeded permanent civilian settlement. Across the nineteenth-century West, forts were built to secure new territory, and when they were abandoned, the soldiers and their families often became the first farmers, merchants, and school trustees of the districts that grew up around them. The uniform came off; the community stayed.
The arc from a garrison of ninety soldiers to a school district, a farmers' union, a political club, and a churchyard is the arc of American community-building itself — the slow, deliberate work of turning open country into a place with institutions and memory. That an Irish immigrant like Hugh Sheridan could help found such a community reminds us how deeply woven newcomers were into the settlement of the West.
Today the community is gone. The school consolidated into a larger district in 1910; the farms passed on; the name faded from the map. What endures is the cemetery — and that, too, is a familiar American story. All across the country, a fenced-off burial ground is frequently the last standing evidence that a living community once gathered on a particular patch of ground.
If you visit
Come to Pleasant Grove Cemetery expecting quiet. This is open Central Texas farm country, and the graveyard is the last remaining trace of the community that made it — a still-active cemetery whose maintenance is now provided by nearby Fort Hood.
Walk the rows slowly and let the stones tell you the community's timeline. Look for the oldest legible markers, the ones from the 1860s and 1870s, and then the long span of veterans' graves reaching from the Civil War all the way to World War II. Keep an eye out for the stone noting a man born at sea — the kind of small, human detail that turns a name into a life. The post oak groves that likely gave the place its name still dot this landscape, so glance up at the trees as well as down at the stones.
It fits naturally into a road trip through the small communities and back roads of Coryell County. Treat it as a chance to stand where a whole town once stood, and to remember that the people who settled this ground meant their graveyard to last "forever" — a promise still being kept.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Hugh Sheridan
- · Nimrod Brown
- · Walter T. Worthington
Related events
- · Closure of Fort Gates
Themes & tags
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