Entries - County: Cleburne - Starting with Q

Quitman, originally a part of Van Buren County, is now located in both Cleburne and Faulkner counties. Twelve miles southwest of the Cleburne County seat of Heber Springs, the small commercial center was once home to Quitman Male and Female College. White settlers began to arrive in the area in 1840, attracted to readily available land and plentiful water. Early families were the Witts, McClures, and Newells. Methodists played an important role in the early years. In 1843, they founded Goodloe’s Chapel, the first church. At about that time, the settlement was known as Red River Mission. In 1848, a post office was established with Jesse Witt as postmaster. The budding town was named after Mexican War brigadier general John …

The Quitman Home Economics Building, located on Second Avenue, was built in 1937–1938 with assistance from the National Youth Administration (NYA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 16, 1994. The first public school in Quitman (Cleburne and Faulkner counties) was established in 1868, and the Quitman Male and Female Institute was founded a year later. The institute (later called the Quitman Male and Female College) constructed a three-story brick building that it used until closing in 1898. The building was turned over to the Quitman School District, which used it until fire destroyed it in 1932. Quitman’s leaders turned to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies to replace …

Quitman Male and Female College was a Methodist institution of higher education that operated in Quitman (Cleburne County) from 1870 until 1898. Over its years of operation, an estimated 3,000 men and women attended the college. Quitman Male and Female College can trace its origins to Quitman Male and Female Institute (sometimes referred to as Quitman Institute), founded in 1869. Professor G. W. Stewart was the administrator of Quitman Institute, which could accommodate 200 students. It is believed that Stewart made a gift of the Quitman Institute to the Methodist Church; afterward, the school became Quitman Male and Female College. The college’s first president, the Reverend Peter A. Moses, came to lead the institution in 1871 and would go on …

This skirmish took place in conjunction with the early stages of Major General Sterling Price’s Missouri Raid. Following up on a report that stated that a forty-man Confederate detachment crossed the Arkansas River at Dardanelle (Yell County) on August 29, with a supply of ammunition intended for Brigadier General Joseph Orville Shelby’s command, Colonel Abraham H. Ryan of the Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) ordered a patrol led by Captain Archibald D. Napier of Company I and First Lieutenant George P. Carr of Company G. On September 2, 1864, this force skirmished with men from Colonel Allan R. Witt’s Tenth Arkansas Cavalry (CS), approximately eight miles from Quitman (Cleburne and Faulkner counties). Napier and Carr apparently drove off the Confederate force, …