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Also see: Battle
of Pleasant Hill Festival / Reenactment
A Brief History of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana
Most of the information for this piece is from a
booklet published by Amos J. Barron and The Battle of Pleasant
Hill by Solon F. Benson - both available in the Sabine parish
Library.
The original site of Pleasant Hill, now referred
to as Old Town was given its name by John Jordan. In 1844, Mr. Jordan,
from the community of Pleasant Valley in Dallas County, Alabama,
was looking for a new home. A beautiful spot in slightly hilly country
in the extreme southern part of DeSoto Parish appealed to Mr. Jordan
so much that he and his family settled there.
Soon, relatives and friends from Alabama joined
the Jordans. Others came. By the early 1850's Pleasant Hill had
become a village, a center of refinement and education. Among its
early settlers were families named Jordan, Childers, Chapman, Davis,
Harrell, and Hampton. Because of cotton, most of them became wealthy
before the Civil war. Some lived in fine homes described as mansions.
When the Civil War began, Pleasant Hill was a thriving
little town with a post office, a hotel, a school for girls, the
Pierce-Payne Methodist College for boys, and a Methodist church.
But on April 7, 1864, terror came to Pleasant Hill and everything
was changed. On that day Federal troops (the Yankees) entered town.
Stores were broken into and goods carried off; chickens, turkeys,
cows, pigs,garden produce, and clothes were taken; fences and even
buildings were used for fuel; and officers were quartered in some
of the nicest homes.
The last known surviving witness of the days of
terror in Pleasant Hill was Mrs. R.A. Rembert who resided in the
town until her death at the age of 93. As Miss Sallie Chapman, she
knew the suspense and the agony of Civil War days when only women
were left in her town, when the enemy occupied her home, and when
1,200 men were left dead or wounded on one of the bloodiest battlefields
of the war.
The ordeal for the women of Pleasant Hill began
when Federal troops passed that way in their march toward Mansfield.
The soldiers left the little town of Pleasant Hill on the night
of April 7, but returned after the Battle of Mansfield. Confederate
troops followed, and fighting began about three or four o'clock
in the afternoon on April 9, 1864. The battle lasted only a few
hours. Both sides claimed the victory. There is still a question
as to who really won.
On the morning after the battle, the women of Pleasant
Hill did what they could for the sick and the dying. Later in the
day, Federals returned to bury their dead and nurse the wounded.
Pierce-Payne College was turned into a hospital for the Yankees,
while the Confederates were cared for in other buildings, including
private homes. Among them was the Childers mansion, which General
Banks had used as his headquarters.
Time passed. The Civil War ended. In 1881, the railroad
came. Again, Pleasant Hill changed; the town moved. Since the railroad,
the Texas and Pacific, did not come to the town, the town went to
the railroad.
The new community, about two miles away and in Sabine
Parish, was called Sodus; but the residents, most of whom had moved
from the old town, continued to say Pleasant Hill. In 1922, the
railroad commissioners decided to drop the name Sodus. Pleasant
Hill, the little town incorporated in 1893, was and is.
There is little to the area now to remind a visitor
that Pleasant Hill was once an educational center. The Pleasant
Hill Academy for Girls, which operated from 1850 to 1870 and which
had as many as 65 - 70 pupils in attendance, has long been gone.
The Pierce-Payne College, which opened in 1858 as a companion school
to Mansfield Female College, has passed into history, as well. Its
construction was halted by the Civil War and its buildings were
never completed; but the college filled a need during its few years
of existence and its home, Pleasant Hill, was an important place.
Source: Materials in the Sabine Parish Library;
authors unknown.
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