"Margaret Grigsby was a daughter of Joseph Grigsby, wealthy cotton planter, living at Grigsby's bluff, near the site of Port Neches. Joseph Pulsifer loved her and his love was returned, and they were to become man and wife. While they waited for the war's echoes to die away and the new-born state to find its balance, they played, just as lovers now, among the prairie flowers and beneath the spreading trees where the birds trilled in love notes no tenderer than those that sang in their own hearts. On the quiet bosom of the Neches they floated in the moonlight and builded castles in the air, even as sweetly sentimental lovers do now, and visioned the home they would together build, and spoke, perhaps timidly of the family they would found.
"Then death came and took Margaret away, only a few weeks before the wedding was to have taken place, and Sorrow sat beside the young lover where Happiness had briefly lingered. And Sorrow remained with him throughout his days, for the legend relates that Joseph Pulsifer never found another sweetheart and remained throughout a long life faithful to a memory.
"A short while after Margaret's death, Joseph embarked in a small sailboat for New Orleans, and successfully braving the waters of the gulf, brought back a plain marble slab upon which he engraved with his own hands the words:
"Margaret Darling, Rest in Peace.
"This he placed over her grave beneath towering forest trees. While he lived he cared for the little mound and for many years after he was gone the people, knowing the story, protected the grave and kept it inviolate — a service in which they testified that the sentiment which moved Joseph Pulsifer had a place in their own hearts.
"But the time came when the progress of industry, the coming of the Texas Company, blotted out the lonely grave. Cattle were loosed upon the plains and sought shade beneath the trees that sheltered the mortal Margaret, and beneath their hoofs the monument to a faithful love was ground to dust, leaving only legend to preserve the story of Joseph and Margaret as proof that hearts were both tender and steadfast in those days."
Taken from The Story of Beaumont, by Florence Stratton.
"Then death came and took Margaret away, only a few weeks before the wedding was to have taken place, and Sorrow sat beside the young lover where Happiness had briefly lingered. And Sorrow remained with him throughout his days, for the legend relates that Joseph Pulsifer never found another sweetheart and remained throughout a long life faithful to a memory.
"A short while after Margaret's death, Joseph embarked in a small sailboat for New Orleans, and successfully braving the waters of the gulf, brought back a plain marble slab upon which he engraved with his own hands the words:
"Margaret Darling, Rest in Peace.
"This he placed over her grave beneath towering forest trees. While he lived he cared for the little mound and for many years after he was gone the people, knowing the story, protected the grave and kept it inviolate — a service in which they testified that the sentiment which moved Joseph Pulsifer had a place in their own hearts.
"But the time came when the progress of industry, the coming of the Texas Company, blotted out the lonely grave. Cattle were loosed upon the plains and sought shade beneath the trees that sheltered the mortal Margaret, and beneath their hoofs the monument to a faithful love was ground to dust, leaving only legend to preserve the story of Joseph and Margaret as proof that hearts were both tender and steadfast in those days."
Taken from The Story of Beaumont, by Florence Stratton.
"Margaret Grigsby was a daughter of Joseph Grigsby, wealthy cotton planter, living at Grigsby's bluff, near the site of Port Neches. Joseph Pulsifer loved her and his love was returned, and they were to become man and wife. While they waited for the war's echoes to die away and the new-born state to find its balance, they played, just as lovers now, among the prairie flowers and beneath the spreading trees where the birds trilled in love notes no tenderer than those that sang in their own hearts. On the quiet bosom of the Neches they floated in the moonlight and builded castles in the air, even as sweetly sentimental lovers do now, and visioned the home they would together build, and spoke, perhaps timidly of the family they would found.
"Then death came and took Margaret away, only a few weeks before the wedding was to have taken place, and Sorrow sat beside the young lover where Happiness had briefly lingered. And Sorrow remained with him throughout his days, for the legend relates that Joseph Pulsifer never found another sweetheart and remained throughout a long life faithful to a memory.
"A short while after Margaret's death, Joseph embarked in a small sailboat for New Orleans, and successfully braving the waters of the gulf, brought back a plain marble slab upon which he engraved with his own hands the words:
"Margaret Darling, Rest in Peace.
"This he placed over her grave beneath towering forest trees. While he lived he cared for the little mound and for many years after he was gone the people, knowing the story, protected the grave and kept it inviolate — a service in which they testified that the sentiment which moved Joseph Pulsifer had a place in their own hearts.
"But the time came when the progress of industry, the coming of the Texas Company, blotted out the lonely grave. Cattle were loosed upon the plains and sought shade beneath the trees that sheltered the mortal Margaret, and beneath their hoofs the monument to a faithful love was ground to dust, leaving only legend to preserve the story of Joseph and Margaret as proof that hearts were both tender and steadfast in those days."
Taken from The Story of Beaumont, by Florence Stratton.
"Then death came and took Margaret away, only a few weeks before the wedding was to have taken place, and Sorrow sat beside the young lover where Happiness had briefly lingered. And Sorrow remained with him throughout his days, for the legend relates that Joseph Pulsifer never found another sweetheart and remained throughout a long life faithful to a memory.
"A short while after Margaret's death, Joseph embarked in a small sailboat for New Orleans, and successfully braving the waters of the gulf, brought back a plain marble slab upon which he engraved with his own hands the words:
"Margaret Darling, Rest in Peace.
"This he placed over her grave beneath towering forest trees. While he lived he cared for the little mound and for many years after he was gone the people, knowing the story, protected the grave and kept it inviolate — a service in which they testified that the sentiment which moved Joseph Pulsifer had a place in their own hearts.
"But the time came when the progress of industry, the coming of the Texas Company, blotted out the lonely grave. Cattle were loosed upon the plains and sought shade beneath the trees that sheltered the mortal Margaret, and beneath their hoofs the monument to a faithful love was ground to dust, leaving only legend to preserve the story of Joseph and Margaret as proof that hearts were both tender and steadfast in those days."
Taken from The Story of Beaumont, by Florence Stratton.
Gravesite Details
No visible headstone remains.
Margaret and her father were buried in Grigsby Cemetery "reputedly under a pecan tree near the Texaco, Inc. docks at Port Neches." (Sapphire City of the Neches, by W. T. Block.)
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