Pleasant Hill Cemetery
Nolanville, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pleasant Hill Cemetery has served the citizens of this area since 1855 and is one of the oldest cemeteries in Bell County. The first person to be interred at the site was J. Carmack (d. 1855). Carmack was buried on the farm of pioneer settler Fleming Trigg Cox (d. 1890), who had arrived in the area from Missouri with his wife Mary Guinevera (Leigh) (d. 1907) in 1852. Both Fleming and Mary are buried at the site. In 1907, Samuel and Nicia Jane (Cox) Cox, descendants of Fleming Trigg Cox, deeded 4 1/3 acres to officially form the Pleasant Hill Cemetery. Also among the earliest settlers in this section of western Bell County were the Kaiser, Sutton and Shriver families, and each family is represented in Pleasant Hill Cemetery. Through the years, several additions of land have been made to the site, which now encompasses more than eight acres. The Pleasant Hill Cemetery Association was organized in 1901 in order to provide maintenance for the cemetery. The association consists of three officers and four trustees and an annual meeting is held at the cemetery on the last Saturday in June. Also in 1901, a tabernacle was constructed on the site that is still in use. Burials in the cemetery include veterans of the Mexican War, Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Today, Pleasant Hill Cemetery reamins active and is open to persons of all religious and ethnic backgrounds. The burial ground serves as a reminder of the hard-working pioneer families who settled this area so long ago.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
One of Bell County's oldest cemeteries, Pleasant Hill has received burials since 1855, beginning on the farm of Missouri-born pioneer Fleming Trigg Cox. Cox descendants formally deeded the grounds in 1907, and a cemetery association organized in 1901 has cared for it ever since, gathering each June beneath a tabernacle raised that same year. Its graves hold veterans from the Mexican War through Vietnam alongside the hard-working families who first settled western Bell County.
Why it matters
Pioneer burial grounds like this anchor a community's memory, tracing the families and generations of soldiers who built and defended a corner of central Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the first burial took place on this ground in 1855, Texas had been a state for only a decade, and Bell County itself was young and thinly settled. This was the far edge of American settlement — frontier country in the truest sense, where families arrived by wagon, claimed farmland, and built their communities largely with their own hands.
The people who came here were part of the great westward push of the mid-19th century, when settlers from older states like Missouri loaded up and moved toward cheaper, open land in the West. Central Texas, with its rolling country and room to farm, drew many of them.
A place like this cemetery marks where that migration put down roots. It was born not from a town plan but from a working farm, in an era when a burial ground was simply a corner of somebody's land set aside for the dead.
People & events
The land belonged to Fleming Trigg Cox, a pioneer settler who had come from Missouri in 1852 with his wife, Mary Guinevera. They were among the earliest to make a home in this part of western Bell County, and it was on their farm that the first grave was dug — that of J. Carmack, who died in 1855. Both Fleming and Mary are buried here as well, on the land they settled.
The cemetery grew the way frontier communities did: family by family. The Kaiser, Sutton, and Shriver families were among the other early settlers, and each is represented in these grounds. In time the Cox descendants made it official — Samuel and Nicia Jane Cox deeded acreage in 1907 to formally establish Pleasant Hill Cemetery.
Care for the place became a shared responsibility. A cemetery association organized in 1901, and that same year a tabernacle was built on the site — a structure still in use. To this day the association gathers here each June, a yearly homecoming that ties the living to the generations resting in the ground.
Its place in the American story
Cemeteries like this one are among the most honest records America keeps of itself. There are no grand monuments here, just the names of the ordinary families who did the hard, unglamorous work of settling a country — and the story of a place told through the people who lived and died in it.
The graves themselves trace the nation's history through its wars. Buried here are veterans of the Mexican War, the Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. In one modest plot of Texas ground lies the whole arc of American military service across more than a century.
That span is the larger meaning of the place. A community that begins on a single farm and endures long enough to bury the soldiers of six wars has become something permanent — a piece of the country that remembers where it came from.
If you visit
This is a quiet, working cemetery, still active and open to people of every faith and background. Come expecting stillness rather than spectacle: weathered headstones, the oldest dating back well over a century, and the sense of a place that has been tended by the same community for generations.
Look for the tabernacle raised in 1901 and still standing — an unusual survivor, and the same shelter under which families have gathered each year for their June meeting. Reading the older stones is its own reward; the surnames repeat, and you can watch the founding families spread across the decades.
If you're traveling through central Texas, a stop here is a chance to slow down and feel how a community remembers itself. Walk gently, leave things as you find them, and let the names do the talking.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Fleming Trigg Cox
- · Mary Guinevera Leigh Cox
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Blackburn Cemetery
Killeen, TX
This small cemetery is the last remnant of the Blackburn family estate, land that now lies within Fort Hood. John Porter Blackburn, a veteran of the War of 1812, moved his family from Tennessee to Bell County in 1853 and was the first buried here after his death in 1855. His sons and descendants served in conflicts from the Civil War through World War II, the last laid to rest in 2001.
Wilson Van Dyke
Belton, TX
South Carolina native Wilson Van Dyke joined the 1842 Somervell Expedition, mounted to drive the Mexican army from Texas, and pushed on across the Rio Grande in the ill-fated venture that followed. Captured, he survived the notorious "Black Bean Episode" — in which prisoners drew beans to decide who would be executed — and endured imprisonment near Mexico City until 1844, later taking part in Civil War-era musters before dying at his Bell County home.
William Whitaker Reed
Belton, TX
William Whitaker Reed came to Texas from Tennessee in 1833 and joined Robertson's colony, taking land along the Little River just as the Texas Revolution swept the region. His family fled in the 'Runaway Scrape,' and he and his brother enlisted in the Republic of Texas Army, helping bury the remains of Fannin's men massacred at Goliad. Settling permanently after the war, Reed helped organize Bell County in 1850 and served as its first sheriff.
Bell County
Belton vicinity, TX
Settlement along the Lampasas River began in 1847, and Bell County was created in 1850, taking its name from Peter Hansbrough Bell—a San Jacinto veteran, Mexican War officer, and governor of Texas. The county seat soon moved from Nolanville to Belton, and by 1860 nearly 4,800 people lived there. When the Civil War came, the county sent a dozen troop companies and supplied its cause with flour mills, a hat factory, tanneries, and workshops.