PLEASANT HILL, TEXAS (Live Oak County). Pleasant Hill, in northern Live Oak County, had its beginning when Juan Houlihan made application on June 23, 1835, to Mexico for a land grant. Houlihan, a native of Ireland, received a league and a labor of land from the state of Coahuila and Texas. On February 28, 1861, county election records show that the citizens of Pleasant Hill favored secession from the Union by a vote of 30 to 0. In 1867 G. J. Claunch constructed a home in the Pleasant Hill community. It would serve as headquarters for the 4,000-acre Claunch Ranch. In 1993 the home still stood as a historical landmark on the property of Herbert Early and D'Ann Taylor Harper. In 1878 Claunch gave four acres of land for a public school. He requested that a portion of this acreage be used as a burial site. Pleasant Hill Cemetery is on a grassy knoll, a short distance from the original Claunch headquarters. The first burial was Banner Lee Osborn, on October 21, 1878. The school and cemetery were eventually incorporated into neighboring Whitsett. The San Antonio-Oakville Coach Line had a route through Pleasant Hill. The cut and wash where it went down the hill by Pleasant Hill Cemetery could still be seen when the road work began for Interstate Highway 37 in 1976.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Live Oak County Historical Commission, The History of the People of Live Oak County (George West, Texas, 1982). Ervin L. Sparkman, The People's History of Live Oak County (Mesquite, Texas, 1981).
