PLEASANT GROVE PLANTATION. Pleasant Grove Plantation, on Gulf Prairie in Brazos County, was the sugar-plantation home of Leander Harrison McNeel, son of John McNeel.qv It adjoined John G. McNeel's Ellersly Plantation on the north and Pleasant McNeel'sqv plantation on the west. The residence was a two-story brick house with marble mantels and hearths. Its ceilings were decorated with plaster medallions. The sugar house and slave cabins were also made of brick. In 1852 the estate produced 208 hogsheads of sugar, and between 1852 and 1858 four crops were harvested. McNeel, however, died in 1851, and after his death the estate was tied up in the courts for forty-three years, at the end of which it was bankrupt. The land was finally sold by court order, after having been divided into forty-acre tracts. It was eventually sold to the Texas prison system and became part of Clemens Prison Farm.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James A. Creighton, A Narrative History of Brazoria County (Angleton, Texas: Brazoria County Historical Commission, 1975). Abner Strobel, Oyster Creek and Brazos Plantation (Richmond, Texas: Price-Ferguson, 1965?).
Diana J. Kleiner
