County: Ashley

Crossett, Edward Savage

Edward Savage Crossett was a pioneer Arkansas lumberman during the late nineteenth century. As the great Southern forest was being developed to meet a growing nation’s need for lumber and wood fiber, Crossett and two associates—all from Davenport, Iowa—came to south Arkansas, acquired land, and began a sawmilling operation that was one of the largest of its kind. The city of Crossett (Ashley County) was named for him and came to be known as “The Forestry Capital of the South.” Edward Crossett was born on February 4, 1828, in West Plattsburgh, New York, one of three children of Mary Gregory and John Savage Crossett, a veteran of the War of 1812. Crossett received his early education in the public schools …

Culbreath, Lee Edward (Murder of)

Lee Edward Culbreath, a fourteen-year-old Black youth, was shot to death on December 5, 1965, in Portland (Ashley County) by a white man who, during his trial, was accused of belonging to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Lee Edward Culbreath and another boy were riding a bicycle together when Culbreath got off at a café and his friend continued toward another store to look at a Christmas tree. As Culbreath stood outside the café, three shots were fired from a black truck, with one striking and fatally wounding him. An Arkansas state trooper stopped the truck shortly afterward and arrested Ed Vail of Hamburg (Ashley County), a forty-year-old mechanic, and his brother James, a barber. Both brothers were charged with …

Davis, Chick (Lynching of)

On July 24, 1899, an African-American man named Chick Davis was shot by a posse near Wilmot (Ashley County). While the incident was covered briefly in numerous national newspapers, coverage in Arkansas was no more detailed. As is often the case, given that the enumeration sheets for the 1890 census were lost to fire, there was no information in public records on Chick Davis or his victim. Newspaper reports indicate that a respected area farmer named Will Grin (sometimes spelled Grinn) suspected Davis of stealing and riding his horse at night. Grin went to Davis to “expostulate” with him, and Davis shot him in the forehead, killing him instantly. Davis then fled and was pursued by a posse composed of …

Davis, Danny K.

Danny K. Davis is an Arkansas-born politician who has represented the Seventh District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives for almost two decades. First elected in 1996 to the 105th Congress, he began his congressional service in 1997. In 2014, Davis was reelected to the 114th Congress, beginning his tenth term in January 2015. Davis was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1998. Daniel K. Davis was born in Parkdale (Ashley County) on September 6, 1941, to Hezekiah Davis and Mazzie Davis. He received his early education in the local schools before graduating from Savage High School in 1957. After earning his BA in history from Arkansas AM&N College (now the University of Arkansas at …

Fountain Hill (Ashley County)

Fountain Hill is a town on U.S. Highway 425 in northern Ashley County. The town has been a center for agriculture and the timber industry and remains supportive of both industries in the twenty-first century. The region that would become Ashley County has been inhabited for thousands of years. When the region first became part of the United States, it was considered Quapaw land, although the Quapaw villages were farther to the north. Quapaw ceded their right to the land in 1818, and settlers began to arrive from Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. James Norris farmed the land between the two springs for which the town was named. He established a cotton gin and a grist mill on the …

Guy v. Daniel

aka: Abby Guy v. William Daniel
Abby Guy v. William Daniel was a freedom suit and racial identity case brought before the Arkansas Supreme Court in January 1861. The case originated in the Ashley County Circuit Court in July 1855 when Abby Guy sued William Daniel, whom she said wrongfully held her and her children in slavery. According to Guy, she and her family were free white people. After a jury decided in favor of Guy, Daniel appealed the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which, in the end, declined to overturn the lower court’s verdict. Guy and her children were freed. Racial identity trials, in which the outcome rested on whether or not one party was white, were not unusual in the South. Guy v. …

Hamburg (Ashley County)

As a small town, Hamburg is typical in the economic challenges facing it but is atypical in that it has become the educational center for most of Ashley County’s geographic area, as well as small parts of Chicot and Drew counties. Early Statehood through Reconstruction Hamburg was laid out in October 1849, two months after Ashley County was formed from part of Drew County in the area earlier known as the Great Wilderness. With the town’s designation as the county seat, two of the first public buildings were the courthouse and the county jail, erected in 1850. The site was chosen at least in part because the legislation organizing the county required that the county seat be within five miles …

Jackson, Boge (Execution of)

Boge Jackson was an African American man hanged at Hamburg (Ashley County) on November 18, 1881, for the shotgun slaying of an elderly Black man the previous year. Boge Jackson and Reuben Jordan initially argued over the placement of a boundary fence sometime in 1880; Jackson threatened Jordan, who apparently ignored him. Jackson and his friend Henry Hill went to a dance on Bayou Bartholomew near Jordan’s house sometime later, and the older man accused Jackson of stealing whiskey from him. They would quarrel again a few days later. “Soon after this old Jordan was found dead in the road,” the Arkansas Democrat reported. “Suspicion pointed unerringly to Jackson and Hill as the authors of the foul crime.” Authorities soon …

Jackson, Joseph Walter (Joe)

Joseph Walter (Joe) Jackson was a talent manager best known as the father and manager of his children’s careers, including the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson, and Janet Jackson. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2011. Joseph Walter Jackson was born on July 26, 1928, in Fountain Hill (Ashley County). He was the oldest of five children of Samuel Joseph Jackson and Crystal Lee King. His father was a schoolteacher. Jackson remembered that his father was one of few African Americans in the area to own a car. The elite status earned his father the nickname of “Professor Jackson.” Much of Jackson’s childhood was spent in Arkansas. However, when his parents separated, he left Arkansas at the …

Jasper, Rickey Lane

Rickey Lane Jasper is the highest-ranking African American ever to serve in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He has also had a career as a minister, serving as a pastor at his church in the United States while pursuing seminary studies both at home and abroad. He is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. Rickey L. Jasper was born in Parkdale (Ashley County) on July 28, 1963. His mother, Louisie Mae Grayson, and her husband, Kirt Grayson, raised him and his siblings in the small town. He graduated from Hamburg High School before heading off to college. Although he had planned to join the military after graduation, the academically inclined Jasper instead decided to join his …

Jeffress/Phillips Music Company

The Jeffress/Phillips Music Company, located in Crossett (Ashley County), is one of the five remaining seven-shape gospel publishing companies in the United States and is the sole seven-shape gospel publisher in the state of Arkansas. While known best as a rural tradition, shape notes, sometimes referred to as character or patent notes, are visual cues that act as points of reference, creating a unique notational style composed of geometric figures. This teaching mechanism led to the development of a rich and varied canon of American folk hymnody notated and practiced in shape notes, of which seven-shape gospel music comprises one specific tradition. Successor to the Jeffress Music Company, Jeffress/Phillips Music is a family-run operation. William Nolin Jeffress, founder of the …

Johnson, James Douglas “Justice Jim”

James Douglas “Justice Jim” Johnson served as an Arkansas state senator and an associate justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court in the 1950s and 1960s. He was an outspoken segregationist and ran unsuccessfully against Orval Faubus for governor in 1956. In the 1966 race for Arkansas governor, he became the first Democrat since Reconstruction to lose to a Republican. Johnson helped to make school desegregation a major political issue in the state by protesting the integration of the Hoxie School District in Hoxie (Lawrence County), as well as by working to get an anti-federalist amendment added to the state constitution. Jim Johnson was born on August 20, 1924, in Crossett (Ashley County) to T. W. Johnson and Myrtle Long Johnson, …

Jones, Henry (Lynching of)

On June 23, 1891, an African-American man named Henry Jones, accused of murdering his wife, was hanged by a mob near Hamburg (Ashley County). The victim may have been a thirty-seven-year-old African American named Henry Jones, who in 1880 was twenty-six and living in Ashley County’s De Bastrop Township with his wife, Eliza, age eighteen, and children Jane (age five) and William (age one). Although newspaper accounts indicate that Jones’s wife’s name was Lucy, this may be an error in reporting. On June 18, the Arkansas Democrat published a report on Jones’s alleged crime. According to the Democrat, Jones told authorities that after cooking breakfast on the morning of June 11, his wife went out to get one of their …

King, Frank (Lynching of)

On June 17, 1895, an African-American minister named Frank King was hanged in Portland (Ashley County) for allegedly shooting and seriously wounding one of his deacons, William Toney. Frank King may be the twenty-two-year-old man who the federal census shows married eighteen-year-old Sophia George in Ashley County in September 1887. According to one report, King, a Baptist pastor, was “on intimate terms” with William Toney’s wife. On Monday, July 16, when the two men met on the street, King allegedly pulled a pistol and shot Toney twice in the abdomen. King tried to escape but was captured and placed in jail in Portland. That same night, a mob of African Americans took King from the jail and “stealthily and quietly” …

Kirkland, John (Lynching of)

John Kirkland was shot to death in Howard County on October 8, 1888, after he attempted to kill a local doctor. A Dr. Chisholm hired Kirkland, a white man, to do some work for him on October 6, 1888, after which the pair had “a difficulty.” They apparently did not solve the issue, and Kirkland “waylaid” the doctor that evening and shot at him, but Chisholm escaped the ambush. A group of armed men set out after the unsuccessful assassin, “but he defended himself and escaped.” Kirkland was captured on October 8 and placed in the custody of a constable. As the lawman transported Kirkland toward the nearby jail, though, they were intercepted by “several masked men with Winchesters” who …

Levi Wilcoxon Demonstration Forest

The Levi Wilcoxon Demonstration Forest (LWDF) is located about three miles south of Hamburg (Ashley County) along U.S. Highway 425. Privately owned, the LWDF is a remnant of the old-growth pine forest that once covered much of southern Arkansas. The LWDF is notable for the dimensions of the loblolly and shortleaf pines still found within its boundaries—most of the pines in this roughly ninety-acre stand are between 100 and 200 years old and over 100 feet tall. For example, the “Morris Pine” is a loblolly fifty-six inches in diameter, 117 feet tall, and estimated to be at least 300 years old. The national champion shortleaf is also found in the LWDF and measures thirty-six inches in diameter and 136 feet …

Longview, Skirmish at

aka: Skirmish at Easling's Farm
  Longview, situated in the northwest corner of Ashley County on the Saline River, was an important transportation hub for antebellum Arkansans. When the Civil War broke out, it became even more important due to both armies’ desperate need of transportation routes for military operations. River routes were especially important in Arkansas, which had only thirty-eight miles of railroad tracks at the start of the war, the fewest of any Confederate state. By 1864, Union forces had captured the northern two-thirds of Arkansas, and the bulk of the remaining Confederate troops in the state had retreated to camps near Camden (Ouachita County). A Confederate pontoon bridge built over the Saline River at Longview made the town a crucial link between Confederate forces in …

Malaria Control Projects in Southeast Arkansas

Two malaria control demonstration projects in southeast Arkansas during the Progressive Era showed not only that the disease could be controlled, but also that control was economically feasible. The project in Crossett (Ashley County) targeted mosquito breeding sites, while the one in the Lake Village (Chicot County) area studied protection by mechanical means. Both were noteworthy successes, though local governments often failed to follow up on those successes. Malaria control was a logical extension of hookworm eradication projects sponsored by the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease. In 1915, Dr. Wickliffe Rose, who headed the commission, said that “malaria was responsible for more sickness and death than all other diseases combined.” The disease sapped the vitality of …

Maxwell, Paul E.

Paul E. Maxwell was a modern artist and sculptor who developed a technique for using stencils to create thickly textured and layered surfaces, as well as objects he patented as “stencil casting” but that later became known as “Maxwell Pochoir.” He was also known for creating the “Max Wall” in the West Atrium of the Dallas Apparel Mart; though demolished in 2006, it can be seen as a backdrop in the science-fiction movie Logan’s Run. His work is highly abstract and often consists of some kind of grid—a form that is non-hierarchical and illustrates a major theme of his work. Paul Maxwell was born in Frost Prairie (Ashley County) on September 17, 1925, to the farm family of Willie F. …

McCombs, William

William Frank McCombs, born in Hamburg (Ashley County), became known nationally and internationally for promoting Woodrow Wilson as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the presidency of the United States and for serving as manager of Wilson’s successful campaign for election. William McCombs was born on December 26, 1875, to William Faulkner McCombs and Mary Frances Pugh McCombs, whose family was among the most prominent in the area. He was one of six children—three boys and three girls. Permanently crippled in a fall during infancy, McCombs depended on the support of a cane for the rest of his life. He became an excellent student, taught by his mother and private tutors before enrolling in an exclusive preparatory school in Tennessee. Later, …

Moffatt, Carolyn

Carolyn Moffatt was a pioneering women’s basketball coach in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Serving as coach at what is now Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) for just under two decades, she led the Tigerettes to national prominence and left an indelible impact on the program as well as Arkansas basketball. Phyllis Carolyn Moffatt was born on May 4, 1934, in Crossett (Ashley County) to Otho Wade Moffatt and Thelma Boyd Moffatt. She grew up in Crossett and attended what later became OBU, earning a BA in physical education in 1956. At Ouachita, she was a member of the college’s Future Teachers of America chapter and played both basketball and tennis. Following graduation, she took a job at Holly Grove High …

Montrose (Ashley County)

Located at an important railroad junction, the city of Montrose in eastern Ashley County is at the intersection of U.S. Highways 165 and 82. Always an agriculturally based city, Montrose is best known today as the home of the Sassy Jones Sauce & Spice Company. Montrose is also the birthplace of Helen Corrothers, who served with the Arkansas Department of Correction before going on to serve on the United States Parole Board. Although western Ashley County is noted for the timber industry, which was centered in Crossett (Ashley County), the eastern part of the county belongs to the Mississippi Delta region, which was home to numerous cotton plantations before and after the Civil War. Dugald McMillan was the first landowner who registered …