Pleasant Grove Cemetery
Combine, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
James Monroe and Permelia Ann (Brizendine) Mathis came to the Combine area in about 1870, joining family already settled here. The couple had 12 children but not all lived to adulthood; eight-year-old Harriet (1864-1873) became the earliest burial in Pleasant Grove Cemetery. In 1879, James and Permelia conveyed one adjacent acre for Pleasant Grove Schoolhouse, which also became an early meeting place for Point View Baptist Church and Pleasant Grove Church of Christ. After the school consolidated and the churches moved, the cemetery expanded into the adjoining acreage. Pleasant Grove Cemetery Association formed in 1985 to preserve this final resting place of pioneers and generations of their descendants. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2017
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Mathis family reached the Combine area around 1870, and the 1873 burial of eight-year-old Harriet Mathis became the first in what grew into Pleasant Grove Cemetery. In 1879 the family gave an adjoining acre for a schoolhouse that also hosted early Baptist and Church of Christ congregations, binding graveyard, school, and church into the community's shared ground. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery, it remains the resting place of the area's pioneers and their descendants.
Why it matters
Small country cemeteries like this one preserve the intertwined roots of school, church, and family that anchored rural Texas settlement.
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Related people
- · James Monroe Mathis
- · Permelia Ann Brizendine Mathis
Themes & tags
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