Bottom: This fantastic photo, believed to have been taken about the time of the First World War, shows the Pleasant Grove School looking very amicable on a pleasant sunny summer day. The camera is looking to the west northwest with the Pleasant Grove Church just out of the picture to the left. Because of the orientation of the Church in a north-south alignment with the door on the south end there was a general expectation, at the current time, that the school house door was also on the south facing toward the road with the roof ridge in a northsouth alignment. This picture, however, proves that not to be the case- we find that the door is on the east end and opens to the morning sun while the four windows on the south let in the bright light from the daytime sunlight. It is interesting to note that the outhouses have been discreetly omitted from the scene by the placement of the camera.
The tall stone monument in the Pleasant Grove Cemetery to the immediate left of the school is one of the Randau monuments-this one from 1892. The next rectangular stone appears to be a photographic combination of the 1909 John S. Hughes and the 1906 Matters monuments. The next monument appears to be a combination, at least from the viewpoint of the camera, of the Randau monument of 1877 and behind it the 1882 monument for the wife of J.E. Hoover (the family that provided a haven for Mr Schweringen, following the prairie fire incident of 1860). And the tall monument on the left appears to be that of the Hovland family of 1888. This picture validates the idea that the school and church were only about 75 yards apart.
Pleasant Grove School was apparently built about 1884 from bricks that were hauled up from the brick yard in Nevada. Some have thought these bricks were from a nearby clay quarry, but the quarries nearby are for other stones.
Pleasant Grove School was apparently torn down shortly after the consolidation in the early twenties. Some of the bricks from this school were used for the construction of a well house at the farm on the east side of the road about 200 yards south of Milford Twp School. Unfortunately this well house is also no longer in existence.
Left: The same area as the photo below with a slightly different camera angle simply to provide a reference point in the spring of 2007 with the Pleasant Grove Church barely visible through the trees on the left of the scene. Unfortunately the tombstones aren't visible because of the growth of the shrubbery. The road is now graveled as it wouldn't have been in the scene below. See also page 57.
