Judge Henry Clay Pleasants

Pleasants came to Clinton about 1854 with a University of Virginia education and a bar license from 1852. Born on March 23, 1828, in Goochland County, he married Ann Eliza Atkinson of Gonzales in 1858, and they had four children. The Handbook of Texas says that after threats he held court with a double-barreled shotgun across his knee. In 1892 he was elected to the new Court of Civil Appeals of the First District at Galveston, where he died on November 7, 1899. His son Robert finished his term.

What the plaque says

Judge Henry Clay Pleasants Graduate, University of Virginia, admitted to bar and practiced law in Virginia until moving to Clinton, Texas, 1854. Was judge 40 years of 23rd District Court. Admired for his courage and impartiality. Despite threats against his life, called in the Texas Rangers in 1876 to bring law to De Witt County. Was elected in 1892 justice of 1st Supreme District, Galveston. Served there until his death. Recorded, 1968

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 0.8 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 24 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 26 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 26 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• Charles Goodwin Breeden — steps away
• Thomas M. Stell — steps away
• Cuero — 0.4 mi
• De Witt County Monument — 0.5 mi