Pleasant Hill Cemetery
Sec 8, Westfield Twp, Fayette County Iowa
3mi north of Fayette village
Also referenced as:   Pleasant Ridge Cemetery, Stone School House Cemetery, Spring Valley Cemetery.
Burial database and photo survey
History articles of the unique pioneer 'colored' community of Fayette County

Surnames buried in Pleasant Hill:  Bass, Bunn,  Coleman, Crosswhite,  Dean, Dixon, Dover,  Epps, Graham, Hebrank, Herbst, Howard, Lewis, Moore, Olson, Ribinson, Stepp, Tann, Thorp, Valentine, Wilson, Wood.

Descendent trees follow the burial database for:  Bass, Dean, Dixon, Epps, Graham, Lewis, Moore, Stepp, Tann, Wilson.  Other surnames may be worked into a master FTM file. 

Last uploaded:  June 19, 2011

...This is a lengthy rough-draft personal note page uploaded as some of the data and pics need to be available for others to utilize or add data.  
...I am taking a break from a project that started a number of years ago, consuming a couple hundred hours, involving  a photo survey of Pleasant Hill Cemetery plus generating descendent trees and a burial database for the surnames of the neighborhood.
...I will likely in the future place the burials and a descendent tree for some of the major surname lines buried in Pleasant Hill Cemetery on separate web pages such as those linked off the 'Index' page.

Walking photo survey of Pleasant Hill Cemetery, 2009 (read album text before browsing pics):
http://public.fotki.com/iowaz/fayette_county_iowa-1/pleasant-hill-cem-s/

Why?

Because of U.B. Church Rev. and farmer, David Watrous  http://www.iowaz.info/surname/watrous.htm and other U.B. abolitionists  such as Dr. Samuel Wroe  http://www.iowaz.info/surname/wroe.htm  a free colored/ethnic neighborhood of pioneer farmers interspersed with European farmers,  developed across the northern portion of Westfield.Twp and into Illyria.Twp, Fayette.Co.IA, beginning in the early 1850's, a decade before the Civil War started.   These settlers and descendents such as the Dixon's http://www.iowaz.info/surname/dixon.htm  Susan Collins  http://www.iowaz.info/surname/collinssusan.htm  would interrogate into the history of Fayette County, Iowa, especially in Westfield and Illyria Townships.

David Watrous (1789-1864),United Brethren minister and abolitionist, encouraged some free blacks and 'coloreds' to follow his family to pioneer farms in Fayette Co, Iowa, starting by 1852. 
David Watrous led the way to Fayette Co, Iowa.   http://www.iowaz.info/surname/watrous.htm

...Beginning in 1852, a historic free 'mulatto, colored, black' neighborhood was pioneered in Westfield.Twp, just north of Westfield (Fayette) village from just east of Dunham Grove through the Spring Valley neighborhood and eastward  to the Frog Hollow, Albany, Lima areas in Fayette County, Iowa. 
...United Brethren Minister David Watrous (1789-1864) would encourage and lead the settlement of the 'colored' families he was familiar with into Fayette County starting in 1851/1852, shortly after land in the area was opened for entry and purchase.   Into the 1860=1870's the early successful farm ownership would encourage a other free 'colored' families to move to the Spring Valley to Lima area.
...By the time of Rev. David Watrous's death in 1864, 12 yrs after coming to Fayette County,  many of the surnames in the 'colored' neighborhood, the surnames buried at Pleasant Hill Cemetery, were established farmers, especially Bass,  Coleman, Dean, Epps, Graham, Lewis, Moore, Tann, Thorp, Wilson.   Other wold come later or marry into the surnames to include;  Crosswhite, Dover, Gamble, Garner, Hebrank, Herbst, Hovey, Howard,  Olson, Sanders/Saunders, Stepp.
...David's son George, a U.B. Minister and pioneer farmer in Clayton Co, Iowa, and other Watrous  family members were also involved.  George would farm in Mallory.Twp, Clayton.Co.IA into the 1890's but eventually move on to Cedar Falls in Black Hawk Co, Iowa.  The remainder of David's children moved westward, with most ending up in Washington state.  Within a couple of decades there would be no Watrous members near the 'colored' neighborhood farms  where they had taken the lead in their establishment.
...The area around Albany and Lima had other active abolitionists families such as the Wroe and Houlsworth surnames.

7. DAVID WATHROUS7 WATROUS (DAVID WATERS6, SAMUEL5, SAMUEL WATERHOUS4, ISAAC WATERHOUSE3, JACOB WATERHOUSE2, GILBERT WATERHOUSE1) was born 07 Nov 1789 in Lyme, New London Co, CT, and died 14 Oct 1864 in Spring Valley area, N of Fayette, Fay.Co.IA. . He married REBECCA HODGKINS 1812 in Greenville, Ontario, Canada. She was born 1792 in Canada, and died 1866 in Iowa?.
More About DAVID WATHROUS WATROUS:
Burial: Dunham Grove Cem, lot 10 (SE corner, near Barber Bro's), Center.Twp, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 4: Aft. 1850, U.B. minister, abolitionist, likely encouraged 'colored' families to move into Fay.Co.IA with him.
Note 6: 1850, Census; farming, $0/400, Rebecca58, ReubenP15, David13, Iroquois.Twp, Jasper.Co.IN
Note 8: Bet. 1851 - 1852, Suspect; came IN to Fay.Co.IA to buy land N of Fayette, bz/2010.
Note 9: 1852, Census; on 80a farm, 2mi N of Fayette, Westfield.Twp, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 10: 01 Oct 1852, Recorded; cash for 80a, N1/2ofSE1/4, sec 8, Westfield.Twp, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 11: Bet. 1852 - 1864, Suspect the single primary reason for ethnic families locating N. of Fayette.IA, bz/2010.
Note 13: 1854, Census; 2m N of Fayette, Westfield.Twp, Fay.Co.IA (close to my butler line, bz/2010).
Note 14: 1854, Land adj. to Thomas Bass & Thomas Graham in the 'colored' & Spring Valley neighborhood.
Note 15: Nov 1854, Bought: lots 11,12, Bk 14 & lots 1,2, Bk 15, Albany plat, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 16: 28 Nov 1855, Bought: lots 1,2, bk 6, Albany, Fay.Co.IA; sold to dau Lydia Aug 1862; to Ed Thorp Oct 1865.
Note 18: 1856, Census; U.B. Minister, with wife, in Albany, Westfield.Twp, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 19: 1856, Adj. is W.A. Skinner34VA, painter, in Albany plat, Fay.Co.IA
Note 20: 16 May 1856, Bought: with Noah Phillips, lot 4, bk 6, Albany, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 21: 1856, Bought lots; 2,3,4,5, Bk 7, Albany plat, Fay.Co.IA
Note 24: 1860, Census; farming sm. amount of land (U.B. Minister), $200/200, Albany, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 25: 1860, With are; Rebecca68Can, Ruben26OH, Lydia/24NY, Francis5IA, Hetta2/IA.
Note 26: 1860, Adj to Andrew Hensley, likely farming some of his land.
Note 27: 14 Aug 1862, Bought: lots 1-6, bk 1, Albany plat, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 28: Abt. 1863, Apparently moved to near Dunham Grove, Center.Twp, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 29: Abt. 1862, May have answered 'calling' for U.B. ministry at Dunham Grove.
Note 30: Aft. 1864, Most of David's Albany lots do not appear in land transactions or they are sold for tax.

More About REBECCA HODGKINS:
Burial: Aft. 1870, Suspect; unmarked in Dunham Grove, adj to husb David, bz/2010.
Note 9: 1870, Census; 89/Can, widowed, enumerated Waters, Westfield.Twp, Fay.Co.IA.
Note 11: 1870, With Perne Audekirk (Odekirk) 24/NY, Margaret 19/WI, adj is Thomas Graham family.
Note 12: 1870, Living sec 17, P.Hill.Cem area, adj to entry farm of deceased husb.
Note 13: Assumed; lived Spring Valley neighborhood until death, bz/2010.

...David Watrous probably was probing for land in Fayette Co, Iowa, from Clayton Co, Iowa, as soon as 1850 when entry land opened above the Neutral Ground line.  Many men were 'squatting' and claiming land before entering acres on the book.  It can be speculated that David Watrous is the one major reason for the 'colored' or ethnic family settlement in northern Westfield.Twp, as David not only led the way to land claims, but remained on location with them as a farmer, U.B. minister and mentor until his 1864 death. 
...After about 1870, I do not suspect major Watrous influence other than son Rev David remained in Clayton.Co. and a couple of other offspring were around until moving westward.  Once established on farms about the same time as Rev David Watrous, and within the European pioneer farm neighborhoods, the colored families would have had enough influence and contacts to draw a few other relatives and friends that they knew in Illinois or Indiana.  The number would never have been great as the area land was bought up and occupied quickly. 
...Most ethnic offspring would soon marry within the groups surnames, but also there were marriages with area European families and numerous would remain to farm in the area.   After David Watrous died, his wife Rebecca lived with a young couple just below the entry 80a farm of David. 
...David Watrous remained closely associated with the 'colored' families from Spring Valley neighborhood through Lima, and would have continued as an active U.B. minister and abolitionist with contacts through his son Rev George in Clayton.Co all the way back across IL, IN and OH.  The main reason for the location from Spring Valley across Albany, Frog Hollow and Lima would have been the more basic structure and abolitionist stance of the U.B. Church rather than the more highly structured M.E. church settling in Fayette.  In time, many of the U.B. patrons would attend or join the M.E. congregation in Fayette.

Thomas Peterman's Booklet regarding early 1840-1850's Fayette.Co.IA,  written 1900+,
pp77-81, copied intact, "The Colored Settlement Between Fayette and West Union."
...Before the (Civil) war Iowa was, as it has been since, a free State, and while it joined Missouri, a slave state, but few colored people were to be found here.  But there was a settlement north of Fayette (2-3mi) that was peculiar and different to anything known elsewhere in this part of the state.  It was composed almost entirely of men of color, all of them dark enough to have made good slaves, and yet but few of them wholly black.  These people were without doubt a mixture of African, Portuguese and other nationalities.  When they first came here they were commonly called mulattoes, but in later years this neighborhood has been commonly spoken of as the colored settlement.
...There was in the early fifties a man living here by the name of Rev. Watrous, whom the people called Father Watrous, who had known some of these colored folks in Illinois.   He wrote to them setting out the great advantages to be found in this country, and advising some of  them to come out at once and look it over and take up land, they found it to their liking.  At that time probably more than half of the county (Fayette) was still government land.  During 1852, T.R. (Thomas) Bass, is father and Benj. Anderson took his advice and came to see the much praised land.  They liked the country and decided it was good enough for them and located.  T.R. Bass took and eighty where Will Finch now lived and Benj. Anderson one south of it.  Father Bass took claim on land now owned by Mr. Saulsbury.  These parties went back to Kankakee, Illinois, and began making preparations to remove to this county with their families.  In April 1853, J.J. Epps and Seymour Wilson also came out to see how they like the looks of things.  Epps at once bought where C. C. Finch now owns, and they wrote back for all to come along as soon as possible.  In May, 1853, a goodly number of families came through by team from the vicinity of Kankakee, where most of them had been living, and they all settled in the vicinity  we have just mentioned.  Notwithstanding the sentiment of the people (whites) here was strongly anti-slavery, the coming among them of these colored people was not looked upon with favor, and there were, at times various consultations among the settlers to see what had best be done about it. But as they settled down to work and attended to their own business, and seemed to take great interest in the matter of education, the prejudice against them soon died away, and for years they have been looked upon much the same as other (white) people.  Seymour Wilson of whom we have spoken, was digging a well north of Albany and in some way it caved in on him and he was killed.  The white people did not turn out readily  to assist at his burial and he was buried on his own premises, but his remains were afterwards removed to the cemetery (Pleasant Hill Cemetery, of the Spring Valley Neighborhood, on the east side of the road from the Stone Schoolhouse) which these people have near the place of their first settlement and which they keep up in good shape.
...Mr. J. H. Powers, of Chickasaw county tells of an interesting incident that occurred over in that county before the (Civil) war.  One A.J. Felt was elected a Justice of the Peace and at that time he was a strong Democrat.  He defended the Dred Scott decision at all available times and had little, if any, felling or sympathy with the colored race.  A negro who lived at Bradford has his watch stolen, and a suit of replevin was commenced before Felt by  the negro to recover the watch.  One D.A. Babcock appeared for the defendant and moved to dismiss the case, on the ground that the defendant was a negro, and that the supreme court had decided that a negro hand no rights that a white man was bound to respect.  This was one of Felt's favorite arguments and a sharp home thrust, but as a court he was equal to the occasion, and turning the attorney said, "Look here, Dave, that may be good politics but Dred Scott decision or no Dred Scott decisions," this nigger is going to have his watch."  A few years in the army and a short time in southern prisons took all the sympathy he ever held for the south out of him, and before the close of the war and for y ears afterward, Andy Felt was one of the most rabid Republicans in the state.
...While these people were not by any means wealthy, they were all, or nearly all of them, very industrious, and the county poor house has never been the home of any of their number and none of them have ever been sent to jail or state prison so far as we know.  Neither have the courts been troubled with litigation brought about by them.  It was supposed by many that after the negroes of the south that had been held in slavery were freed, that there would be a general exodus of colored people to the north.  But such has not been the case.  The number of colored people in Fayette county has not perceptibly increased since the close of the (Civil) war.  In fact, the settlement of which we have spoken, has become somewhat scattered and while there may be as many or even more of them in the county than there were forty years ago, there is no one settlement that now contains as many as did the settlement of some forty-five years ago.
...Among those who came at that time were Sion Bass, who was grandfather of the Sion Bass who now lives near Lima.  Thomas and John Graham, the later is still living, but the former died a short time ago, and had lived since coming here not far from where he first located.  Sandy Bass and Isam Lewis, who was the father of the Lewis boys, who are not well to do farmers living in Westfield township, and not far from where their father located.  Aunt Sally Wilson also came with the others and, while not married had a family under her care.  We think non of the people whom we have mentioned were at any time in their lives slaves, but were free colored people from Ohio and Illinois.  Sion Bass had been engaged before coming here in running boats on the Ohio river, and was more or less engaged in shipping corn to points away down on the river from above Cincinnati.
...Mr. (Hiram) Waterbury, of Fayette, became much interested in the education of these colored people and took great interest in teaching and encouraging the older ones to learn to read and write.  One of them who had been taking a few lessons and seemed quite hard of learning and dull of understanding at all at once became quite an expert and ready reader.  At first Mr. Waterbury was disposed to think some marvelous light had broken suddenly in on his colored pupil, but he soon discovered that he had been imposed upon, and he said:  "Jack (Tann) you have been fooling me.  You could read all the time."  These people have not, as a general things, intermarried with the whites, and there has never been much, if any, trouble with them on that score.  They have not apparently been as long lived as might have been expected.  Some families have become almost extinct.  Whether the climate has been too rigorous, or whether a mixed race of people are not long lived, we are unable to say.  It is not an easy matter to trace the ancestry of a mixed race.  Jack Tann, who was one of those who came in 1853, says, that his grandfather was a Hindoo (Hindu), and came from Calcutta to Cuba.  From Cuba to the United States, where he married a white woman.  However, he says, that his grandmother was a mixture of white and Indian and she married an Octoroon.  This pedigree may be a little mixed, but if correct it would be difficult to tell exactly where Jack (Tann) is at, but no matter from whom any of these people have descended, they have always been loyal Americans and good, respectable, law abiding citizens.
...Today in all the country that our hunters traveled over, there is not an acre of wild or unclaimed land.  Nearly every quarter section is a fine well improved farm, worth from fifty to seventy-five dollars per acre.  Osage, Charles City and Mason City were not even post offices at that time, and today they each count their inhabitants by  the thousand.  However (at the tow former places towns were laid out this same season, 1853, but neither were then given the same names that they now have.  At Mason City nothing was done until the next year but is is much the largest place at the present time.  New Hampton was then a very wet un-inhabited spot on a large wet prairie.  Scores of other find thriving towns now dot this beautiful land, where at that time the wolf, deer, elk, and other wild animals held supreme and undisputed sway.  The quietude of the whole country which then made it apparently lonely and desolate, has for years been broken by the shrill whistle of the locomotive, as it easily carries to distant markets the abundant productions of this more than fertile land.
...Had any one in the fifties (1850') made the prediction that within the next forty years many of the deep, miry sloughs of Fayette, Chickasaw and counties joining would become as dry and hard as the streets of a city, and that fields of corn would be growing where the stage coach was stuck in the mud so fast that six horses could not move it after all the passengers were out; I say, had anyone predicted that this would so soon be good farm land, he would have been laughed to scorn, and have been considered a fool or a knave, or else a fit subject for the insane asylum.  But all these things have actually come to pass for these many years.  At that time thee were many slough wells, where the water could be dipped u p with a bucket, but to get a drop of water in the same localities now holes are drilled from one hundred to three hundred feet deep.  Tame grass, fertile fields, thousands of domestic animals and many thousand happy people have taken the place of the wild grass and wild deer, and while our elk hunter still lives to tell of these wild scenes of those early days the the days of the elk and of elk hunting in this country are forever gone.

1910 History of Fayette Co, Iowa, by Fitch, pages 131-132, "The Negroes"
edited notes, additions, rewritten material and clarifications, bz/8/2006
...Settlement of colored people in Westfield Twp started as early as 1852. United Brethren Rev. George Watrous likely encouraged their move from the Kankakee Co. in northern Illinois on the Indiana line, where he had known some of the families.  NOTE, bz/2010:  It was not George Watrous but instead his father David Watrous, U.B. Minister (1789-1864) who encouraged and would lead 'colored folks' to pioneer farms north of Fayette and in the Albany/Lima area.
....Other families continued to follow forming a ‘neighborhood’ just north of the Lima/Albany/Fayette area, which would become known as the ‘Colored Settlement.’
The ‘colored’ families were not pure African blood, but a mixture of various nationalities to include Caucasian, with African and Portuguese predominating. Their features to include facial and skin color were more traditional European than that of African blacks of the American slaves of the time. These families were industrious, frugal and progressive farmers. They were considered progressive, law-abiding, with an interest in educational and religious institutions.
...Most of the families joined the United Brethren teachings of ‘Father Watrous.’ When a school house was built in the ‘Colored Neighborhood,’ a preaching appointment was established to coincide with the opening of the school, and continued into the 1900’s. A plat of ground, Pleasant Ridge Cemetery, was dedicated early for burial purposes. The Stone School house/church just south and across the road on the other side of the valley from the cemetery was still standing in 1910.
...As the founders of this colony became established their children continued to farm in the area. Numerous offspring when on to the higher schooling in Fayette to include attending Upper Iowa University, with some becoming excellent teachers.
...It was thought that not many, if any, of these families were slaves at the time of their movement to Westfield Twp. Some of the more pro-slavery and/or anti-colored early settlers did not receive with favor the establishing of colored farms in the area, and tried to dissuade them from staying. The Civil War and its effects basically changed the early resistance to one of only a ‘minor issue.’ Some enlisted to serve in the Civil War. In the last decades of the 1800’s they generally were inclined not to intermingle and kept relatively to themselves, but prospered on their farms, being reliable and trustworthy citizens of the area.
...Some of the earliest families were: T.R. Bass, Sion Bass, Sandy Bass, Thomas and John Graham, J.J. Epps, Seymore Wilson (killed digging a well), Benjamin Anderson, John Jack Tann (said he descended from Hindoo, Am. Indian, Negro races), Samuel Maxfield, Isam Lewis, Stepp, Collins', Aunt Sally Wilson.
...Many of the early settlers are buried at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery (two miles north of Fayette of Hwy150). The ‘Colored Settlement’ just north of Albany and Fayette remained as of 1910 the only Negro or colored people in Fayette County

Fayette County Iowa Settled by Black Pioneers, Settlement Unique in Iowa
Waterloo Courier article, Sunday, Sept 5, 1971, copied basically intact as published up to the point the article quotes Fitch’s 1910 History of Fayette, which is summarized above, on this page.
...Fayette—The cemetery is somewhat derisively called, "The Blackberry Patch." Shaded by trees, it sits four miles north of Fayette village on the east side of Hwy 150, a cornfield to the north and gully on the south. Here, the remains of some of the oldest settlers of Fayette County are buried. Most of them are Negroes (of mixed blood, mulatto).
...For one of the most unique, and least remembered, Pioneer settlements in Iowa was the black community of Westfield Twp., in Fayette County. These pioneers came to the undulating hills of the Volga River valley as early as 1851. The pro-slavery boys tried to run ‘em out. But they stuck to the hills and valleys and raised their crops and their children and became successful farmers and fought in their country’s wars and when they died white folks from the area attended their funerals.
...Now only a few descendants of the original colony remain in Fayette County, in Westfield Twp., west (northwest) of the old settlement of Albany, where they continue to farm seemingly unmolested by the fears and the desperation felt by many of their brothers in the urban ghettoes. (by the 1971 article, the State’s Volga Lake Project taken a high percentage of the original ‘Colored Settlement’ farms).
...In 1868 the ‘black’ (mullato) population of Fayette Co. was 70. At its peak in 1880, the settlement boasted a population of about 120. Black Hawk County in 1880 had a black population of 37. In the 1840 census, Iowa had a total Negro population of 186, including 16 slaves. Most lived in Dubuque, where they worked in the lead mines. By 1850, there were 333 blacks in Iowa. Their children were not allowed to attend public schools with white children. It was the law.
...In 1851, 11 years after the first white settler moved into Westfield Twp., Thomas Graham moved to Westfield Twp., where he purchased 123 acres of land.  The area north of the Neutral Ground opened in 1850 for pioneer settlement. Therefore Thomas Graham and the other early members of the ‘Colored Settlement’ were among the very early pioneers of the Volga flowage of Westfield Twp.)
...One history book says Graham’s father was a Scot and his mother French and Portuguese. He wore a flowing beard, and was identified as being one of the earliest settlers of the so-called "Colored Settlement." He cast his first volt for Zachary Taylor and voted Republican consistently. He served on a U.S. District Court jury at Dubuque in the 1870s.
...J.J. Epps was another early member of the community. Epps was born in Georgia in 1820, moved to Indiana in 1837, then to Fayette County in 1853, where he purchased 108 acres of farmland. Ten of his 14 children survived.