I rarely find any information on this community, but I know my grandparents lived in this clapboard house there. There was a school at one time in the 1920’s and my father started to school there. A few years later, my father and his siblings rode horseback to a one room school in Patricia. The only thing I saw of the school or community was a mulberry tree and a piece of concrete which was said to be part of the steps of the school.
Royce Scott in his “My Rambling History of Patricia, Tx.” mentions the Pleasant Valley School. His father Alton and siblings attended the school also. We have all wondered my the area had been named Pleasant Valley… it was as flat, dry and barren as it could be. Some of the early settlers, Slater Johnson and the Parhams had come from Mt. Pleasant in Titus Co. but none of us know if that had anything to do with the name.
A book by the Martin County Historical Commisson lists this about the community…Pleasant Valley Community was located in an area ajacent to the Wolcott Ranch. The school was about seven miles west of the ranch and about a mile east of the L7 Ranch (almost at the four cornes of Martin, Andrews, Gaines and Dawson Counties). The school was organized in May of 1924 with thirteen students and one teacher. E. M. Ross’ children attended the school as did the eight children of John S. Scott although his youngest children were not of school age. Their mother had died and I guess babysitters were not available while John worked. Among the teachers at the school over the years were; Nora Parham, Earl Hightower, a Freeman, Nolan Robinett, Doc Moore, Slater Johnson, Greenlee and Mable Jones. Leo Phelan remembers the school having a school bus that was also a milk truck. The first school bus had been someones car pulling a two wheeled wagon. The school consolidated with Klondike with part of the students going to Flower Grove and part to Patricia.
Some of the activities of the community included; singings, basketball (usually with Independence another nearby community of which I know nothing). There were revival meetings of the Methodist, Baptist and Church of Christ. Although there is no longer a Pleasant Valley Community, people who lived there have memories of the “Good Old Days”.
Families of the community included…J.H. Holders, Charlies Sinclair, Ross Hightower, the Kinders, Doc Williams, the Welches, the Freemans, and the Woernonekes.”
At one time, I have been told the community held picnics near my Grandparents house. One such picnic is shown in the top photograph. I do not know who the me is as marked in the picture but I am certain that some of my family was at this picnic.
The second pictuare shows my Grandparents, my brother and myself in front of their house…. many years later.