Confederatevets.com

On November 12, 1921, the Confederate Home of Missouri lost one of its most worthy and distinguished inmates.

Dr. Joseph Benson Pleasants, born at Bowling Green, Ky., October 16, 1830, was a son of Daniel B. Pleasants, of Virginia, who married Miss Harriett Hopkins, of Baltimore, Md. He was educated at Bowling Green, Ky., and began teaching at the age of sixteen years. At the age of nineteen he was practicing dentistry in St. Louis, Mo., but when the gold fever swept the country, he went to California, and from the gold fields he carried a competence to Old Mexico, and practiced his profession as a dentist in the City of Mexico with great success.

A few years later he returned to the States and practiced his profession in Lebanon, Mo., and also edited the Laclede County Journal, a red hot advicate of the things for which the Confederacy afterwards stood.

At the very beginning of hostilities in 1861, he organized a company of cavalry and was chosen its captain, and later Gen. Sterling A. Price requested him to merge his company into his battalion, and our hero, for such he was, was advanced to the rank of major on General Price's staff.

He was wounded and sent to Jackson, Miss., where he met Miss Mollie Hedger, the only person who ever captured the Major, although he had many narrow escapes. After the war Major Pleasants practiced dentistry in Missouri, and during the last fourteen years prior to his entry into the Confederate Home at Higginsville, he lived in St. Louis. His health failed him, and he went to the Home in January, 1913, together with his faithful wife, who tenderly ministered to him until the end. He is survived by his wife and three sons.