Pleasant Hill

KITTRELL, PLEASANT WILLIAMS (18051867). Pleasant Williams Kittrell, author of the bill to establish the University of Texas, son of Bryant and Mary (Norman) Kittrell, was born at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on April 13, 1805. At age thirteen he entered the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated at age seventeen. His great-grandfather, Judge John Williams, had helped establish the university. Kittrell then studied at the medical college of the University of Pennsylvania but left without a degree in 1824 and returned to North Carolina to practice medicine. He served later as a trustee of the university and was also twice elected to the state legislature. In 1837 he moved to Alabama, where he was elected to the state legislature three times, though he continued his practice of medicine. While he was serving in the Alabama legislature the University of Alabama conferred on him an honorary master of arts degree. In 1847 he was married to Mary Frances Goree, his second wife. He served also as trustee of the Judson Institute, a school for girls that his father-in-law, Dr. Langston Goree, had served as regent.