Pleasant Grove Cemetery
Elgin, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
By 1860, a log structure near this site served as a school and church. In 1871, E.E. Smith sold land to trustees of the Pleasant Grove School. The farming and ranching settlement of Pleasant Grove grew, and by 1890, the school served 51 students; the community’s cemetery developed nearby. Residents built a two-story Woodmen of the World lodge in 1908 and used the first floor as a school. After razing the building in 1924, they reused the lumber for a new schoolhouse. Pleasant Grove School consolidated into the Elgin District in 1949, and the Pleasant Grove Cemetery Association purchased the former schoolhouse in 1967. Today, the burial ground remains the primary connection to the Pleasant Grove community. Although some of the many unmarked burials in the cemetery predate it, the earliest marked grave dates to 1871. The earliest birth year found on a gravestone is that of Clairbourn Scroggins, born in 1799. Among those buried here are military veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to the present. The cemetery is a link to their memory and to the history of Pleasant Grove. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By 1860 a log building near this site served as both school and church for the farming settlement of Pleasant Grove, and land was formally deeded for a school in 1871 as a cemetery took shape nearby. The community built a two-story Woodmen of the World lodge in 1908, reused its lumber for a later schoolhouse, and saw the school consolidate into Elgin in 1949. The cemetery — its oldest marked grave from 1871 and one gravestone recording an 1799 birth — endures as the settlement's chief remnant.
Why it matters
Pleasant Grove shows how a single frontier log building serving as school and church could seed a lasting community whose cemetery, holding veterans from the Civil War onward, outlives the settlement itself.
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Related people
- · Clairbourn Scroggins
Themes & tags
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