PILGRIM, TEXAS. Pilgrim is on Farm Road 1116 sixteen miles
southwest of Gonzales in southern Gonzales County. The area was
initially settled in the 1820s, and settlers were drawn to the
site by extensive salt flats along nearby Salt Stream and Salt
Creek. Another prominent local feature, Pilgrim Lake, was named
for Thomas J. Pilgrim, who had been granted the land on which it
lay. A post office called Salt Stream operated in the community
from 1855 until 1857. The community was the hideout of John
Wesley Hardin in the 1870s. Burnett School, named for a family
of local settlers, was established in 1875. Salt Creek School
was opened in 1878, and a black school, Lake Grove, was opened
in 1883; all three were part of the Pilgrim Creek school
district. The Pilgrim Lake post office opened in 1879, and in
1884 the community had an estimated 100 inhabitants, a
Presbyterian church, a steam gristmill, and a cotton gin. The
town's name was shortened to Pilgrim in 1900. A mercantile store
was built in 1902, and its second