Historical Marker

Pleasant Grove Cemetery

Historical marker location:
Gilmer, Texas
( 9 mi. N of Gilmer on US 271, then 2 mi. E on FM 593, then 4.5 mi. N on FM 1975)
Marker installed: 1998

Many of the pioneer families who settled in this area and established the Lafayette community in the 1850s immigrated from the southern United States. The 1860 burial of one-year-old Thomas J. Harrison, son of Georgia immigrants Abram and Harriet Harrison, is the first recorded in the cemetery. Land for church and cemetery purposes was set aside by J. M. Brison in 1870. Iron ore, mined commercially here in the 1890s, was used to mark several grave sites of the area's earliest settlers. The cemetery is maintained by an association organized in 1973.