Joseph Pulsifer was one of the small company of settlers who laid out the town of Beaumont. He came from the east to establish a drug business just across Pearl Street from where the courthouse now stands. He was one of the earlier volunteers to join the patriot army that won Texas freedom and afterwards served as county clerk. 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 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 hearts." Death came and took Margaret away, only a few weeks before the wedding was to have taken place. He never found another sweetheart and remained faithful her memory. He sailed to New Orleans and brought back a plain marble slab upon which he engraved with his own hands, "Margaret Darling, Rest in Peace." He placed this over her grave beneath a tree. He cared for the site throughout his life and for many years after others who knew the story did the same. But with time came industry and the Texas Company, which blotted out the lonely grave when cattle were loosed at the site and the monument was trampled under their hooves.