Entries - County: Conway

Arkansas Sky Observatories

Arkansas Sky Observatories (ASO) is a network of four observatories that conduct studies of near Earth asteroids (NEOs), objects that pose a danger of impact at some point to planet Earth. ASO began in 1971, located on the south brow of Petit Jean Mountain. ASO was one of the first five contributing observatories to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics network and continues to be a major contributor to the Harvard Minor Planet Center today. This relationship has resulted in more than 50,000 contributed orbital measurements of comets and asteroids. ASO was established by P. Clay Sherrod and his brother, Brian Sherrod. P. Clay Sherrod has authored seventeen books in astronomy, archaeology, and the environmental/biological sciences, and has patented numerous inventions …

Black, Daniel

Daniel Black is a nationally renowned, award-winning novelist. His works are inspired by African-American life, history, and heritage in the South—encompassing themes of race, religion, and sexuality. Daniel Black was born on November 28, 1965, in Kansas City, Kansas, but grew up in Arkansas in Blackwell (Conway County). His great-grandmother, Stella Swinton, was his childhood caregiver. He graduated from Morrilton High School in Morrilton (Conway County). Upon graduation from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1988, he was awarded a full fellowship to Temple University, where he earned a master’s in 1990 and a doctorate in 1992, both in African-American studies. Black also earned the prestigious Oxford Modern British Studies fellowship, leading him to study at …

Blackwell (Conway County)

The Conway County community of Blackwell was organized in 1872 when the area was designated as a railway station by the newly developed Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. The stop was designated as Blackville Station and was primarily intended as an agricultural loading site. The area surrounding Blackwell is made up of Arkansas River bottomland that is among the most productive farmland in the state. In 1878, the area warranted a post office, and a major disagreement ensured regarding the name for the community. Station stops along the railway were often named for someone employed by the railroad and had little to do with local geography or customs. Eventually, the community settled on the Blackwell name, although the record does not …

Catholic Point (Conway County)

Catholic Point, which began in 1878 in rural northern Conway County, is a small Italian community associated with the large European immigration of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The community is best known for the Catholic Point Picnic, which has been held since 1929 on the third Saturday in June at the parish hall of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Catholic Point maintains its cultural identity, and the afternoon picnic attracts more than 2,500 each year. From the mid-1870s until 1890, Bishop Edward M. Fitzgerald, the second prelate of the Diocese of Little Rock, promoted and successfully attracted Roman Catholic families from Europe, many of whom were facing difficult economic conditions, to the state. While not necessarily identified as a part …

Center Ridge (Conway County)

The history of Center Ridge, an unincorporated community in northeastern Conway County, spans and connects to some of the key developments in Arkansas history, from the bitter division during the Civil War to the evolution of the rural economy of upland Arkansas—which developed from subsistence agriculture to row crops, animal husbandry, and more recently, natural gas extraction. Archaeological excavations made prior to the construction of Brewer Lake, in central Conway County, indicate that Native Americans occupied the area for thousands of years. The upland portion of Conway County was largely uninhabited by the late 1830s, when white settlers began to arrive. The first community in the area, about four miles west of present-day Center Ridge, was Lick Mountain, and the …

Cherokee [Steamboat]

The Cherokee was a steamboat that sustained a devastating and deadly boiler explosion at Lewisburg (Conway County) on December 11, 1840. The Cherokee, under the command of twenty-seven-year-old New York native Charles Harris, was advertised as a “well-known, very light draft, fast running steamboat.” The vessel made regular runs carrying passengers and cargo from New Orleans to Little Rock (Pulaski County), Fort Smith (Sebastian County), and Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The steamboat arrived at the river town of Lewisburg around sunrise on December 11, 1840. After stopping for about fifteen minutes, the Cherokee pulled out into the Arkansas River, and almost immediately the flue of one boiler collapsed and another exploded, casting forth scalding steam and …

Cleveland (Conway County)

Cleveland, located in northern Conway County between the East and West forks of Point Remove Creek, was once a thriving center of area trade. Little remains of the farming town that once numbered over 300. The surrounding landscape that was previously planted in cotton is now dominated by sheep, beef cattle, and chicken houses. The first white settler to occupy part of the one-square-mile plot of land on which Cleveland was founded is believed to have been James T. Massey, who arrived in 1871. Though others gradually moved to the area, the town did not develop for several years. The first store was established in 1883 by John W. Todd and T. J. Hannaford. Todd had settled in the area …

Conway County

Conway County was established by an act of the territorial legislature on October 20, 1825, from land taken from Pulaski County. It was named for Henry Wharton Conway, a member of the Arkansas Territory’s delegation to Congress. At the time, it comprised 2,500 square miles and included most of the present Conway, Faulkner, Van Buren, White, Cleburne, and Perry counties and part of Yell County. Located in the Arkansas River Valley, Conway County’s geographic structure ranges from the ridges of the Ozark foothills in the extreme northwest to the rich lowlands near the Arkansas River—a quite varied topography. The county’s native hardwood and pine forests have been a resource for the timber and recreation industries. Cotton was grown in the …

Conway County Courthouse

The Conway County Courthouse in Morrilton (Conway County) was designed in 1929 by Frank W. Gibb in a fusion of Greek, Roman, and Italian Renaissance architectural styles, exhibiting the diminishing popularity of the Classical Revival style during the early twentieth century. The Conway County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 13, 1989. Before the Morrilton site was chosen for the county seat, court proceedings had been held in four previous locations. In 1825, when Conway County was created, the town of Cadron was selected as the first established seat of county government. In 1829, the county seat was moved from Cadron to Harrisburg (then the house of Stephen Harris in Welbourne Township). An election ordered by …

Cotton, Sheila Holland

Sheila Holland Cotton is an artist noted for her richly painted oils embracing the visual experience of Arkansas. Her scenes of agricultural and rural landscapes give a sense of isolation and mournfulness yet remain celebratory. The mysticism in Cotton’s art links her to the modern school of Magic Realism and the legacy of artists Carroll Cloar and Al Allen Jr. of twentieth-century Arkansas.  Sheila Holland was born on May 13, 1947, in Morrilton (Conway County). She was the only child of Edward William Holland and Madeline Oliver Holland. Both her parents came from families that settled in southern Arkansas in the 1840s. In 1950, her parents moved to North Little Rock (Pulaski County), where she grew up and attended school. Her father left his job as manager of a chain of movie theaters to pursue a career in aviation. He was appointed director of aeronautics for the …

Gordon, Anderson

Anderson Gordon was a state legislator, Confederate officer, and participant in the Brooks-Baxter War. Anderson Gordon was born on February 13, 1820, in Maury County, Tennessee. The son of John Gordon and Nancy Tomlinson Gordon, he spent part of his childhood in Alabama and moved to Arkansas in 1839. The family settled about six miles north of Lewisburg (Conway County). When he was a child, his right hand was partially disabled due to a fever. Gordon engaged in a number of enterprises in Conway County, including store clerk, grocer, and farmer. He married Lydia Griffin on April 22, 1846, and the couple had ten children, three of whom survived to adulthood. In 1854, he obtained forty acres of land from …

Gordon, Nathan Green

Nathan Green Gordon was a naval pilot in World War II, Medal of Honor recipient, and lawyer. He served as lieutenant governor from 1947 to 1967, the longest tenure of one person in that office in Arkansas history. Nathan Gordon was born on September 4, 1916, in Morrilton (Conway County), the second of four children of Edward (Ed) Gordon Sr., a lawyer and one-time state representative, and Ada Ruth Gordon. Noted as “a boy who couldn’t pass up a challenge or a dare,” he showed excellence at a young age. Growing up in Morrilton, he attended public school through the tenth grade before finishing high school at Columbia Military Academy in Tennessee, where he played baseball and football and was …

Hardison, T. W.

Thomas William Hardison is known as the founder of the Arkansas state park system, though he was also renowned in the disparate areas of medicine, archaeology, resource conservation, community service, natural and cultural history, and literature. T. W. Hardison was born in Richland (Columbia County) on April 2, 1884, to Dr. William Harvey Hardison and Caroline Peavy Hardison. Hardison entered Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) in 1902 but left the next year for Memphis Hospital Medical College. After two years in medical school, he returned to Arkansas in 1905, receiving his medical license through the state medical board. Following a brief practice in Tucker (Jefferson County), Hardison secured a job as a contract physician for the Fort Smith Lumber …

Hawkins, Marlin Conover

Marlin Conover Hawkins served Conway County as an elected official for thirty-eight years. His ability to deliver votes to statewide and national candidates gave Hawkins a profile in state politics that was rare for a county official. His political machine is an important part of Arkansas’s political lore, and the effects of his political contacts are still evident in Conway County. Marlin Hawkins was born on April 22, 1913, near Center Ridge (Conway County) to John Carl Hawkins and Nettie Mae Hawkins. John Carl Hawkins, a sharecropper and part-time barber, died in 1929. As the second of seven children, part of the burden of supporting the family fell on Hawkins. He worked as a sharecropper and part-time janitor until Olen …

Hoelzeman, George Raymond

George Raymond Hoelzeman is a liturgical artist who has gained national acclaim for his creation of church furniture, statues, and relief woodcarvings, particularly those depicting the Stations of the Cross (also known as the Way for the Cross) for Catholic churches throughout the United States. George Hoelzeman was born on April 24, 1963, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the eldest of four sons born to Aloys Joseph (A. J.) Hoelzeman, who was a carpenter, and Therese Huber Hoelzeman, a nurse and music teacher. He grew up in Morrilton (Conway County) and received his primary and secondary education at Sacred Heart School there. After graduating from high school, Hoelzeman entered St. Joseph Seminary in Covington, Louisiana, graduating in 1985 with a …

Holyfield, Wayland

Wayland Holyfield was a prolific country music writer and recording artist who wrote one of Arkansas’s official state songs, “Arkansas, You Run Deep in Me.” He was a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame. Wayland D. Holyfield was born in Mallet Town (Conway County) on March 15, 1942. He attended grade school in Springfield (Conway County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County) and graduated from Hall High School in Little Rock in 1960—after attending high school in Mabelvale (Pulaski County) during the Lost Year of 1958–59 when Little Rock’s high schools were closed. He attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) on a basketball scholarship and then the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville …

Lewisburg (Conway County)

Lewisburg is a former town in Conway County. It was a vibrant community from 1831 until 1883, when it ceased being the county seat of Conway County, replaced by Morrilton. An important town on the Arkansas River, Lewisburg played a significant role in the Civil War. But following the war, the town was bypassed by the railroad, which favored the development of Morrilton. Lewisburg was founded as a trading post and steamboat landing along the Arkansas River in 1825 by Stephen D. Lewis—hence the name Lewisburg. (Some later sources also credit Lewis’s father, General William Lewis, although he died in January 1825.) The town was an important stagecoach stop and played a part in the Indian Removal along the Trail …

Lewisburg, Scouts from (September 6–12, 1864)

A flurry of Union scouting expeditions set out from Lewisburg (Conway County) between September 6 and 12, 1864, as Colonel Abraham H. Ryan tried to determine the locations of Confederate troops while Major General Sterling Price was beginning his invasion of Missouri in the fall of 1864. Ryan, commanding the Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) from its base at Lewisburg on the Arkansas River, began sending scouting expeditions into the region on September 6 to determine where Price’s troops were operating; they, in fact, were beginning to cross the Arkansas at Dardanelle (Yell County) on September 6. A patrol of the Third Arkansas scattered Confederate pickets and captured thirteen horses at Norristown (Pope County) on the same day. Ryan dispatched scouts …

Lewisburg, Skirmish at

Lewisburg (Conway County), a thriving town in the 1860s, was the site of a significant occupation force of Union troops during the Civil War. Located about fifty miles west of Little Rock (Pulaski County), it was the first and most significant river port along the way to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Indian Territory. Federal troops under the command of General Frederick Steele raised the U.S. flag there on September 28, 1863, and remained there as an occupation force until August 1865. As Conway County had divided interests and loyalties, two Union companies were raised there soon after the Rebels abandoned their relatively unprotected positions in late 1863. These units were assigned to the newly formed Third Arkansas Regimental Cavalry …

Massey, Mary Elizabeth

Mary Elizabeth Massey was a history professor noted for her early studies of women in the Civil War, years before women’s history courses became common in university history departments. Her books have continued to be important decades after their publication. Mary Elizabeth Massey (she used her full name throughout her life) was born on December 25, 1915, in Morrilton (Conway County) to Mary McClung Massey and Charles Leonidas Massey. After graduation from Morrilton High School, she attended Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). For multiple years, Massey was president of her sorority (in an era when Hendrix had fraternities and sororities), and she served on the Interfraternity Council, the dormitory council, and the Student Senate, in addition to serving one-year …

Menifee (Conway County)

The town of Menifee has its origins in the 1820s when Dr. Nimrod P. Menifee bought property west of Cadron Creek and along the Arkansas River. The location was adjacent to the Cadron Settlement, once considered as the site for the capital of the new Arkansas Territory and for the seat of Pulaski County. After Little Rock (Pulaski County) was designated the territorial capital, Cadron declined in importance. However, the settlement on the western side of Cadron Creek developed and prospered as the Menifee plantation. The post–Civil War era created the community that continues into the twenty-first century as an incorporated city. Menifee and his son, Dr. Lewis Menifee, organized a large plantation in addition to a river crossing known …

Menifee High School Gymnasium

The Menifee High School Gymnasium, located on the northwestern corner of North Park and East Mustang streets in Menifee (Conway County), was built in 1938 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 6, 2002. Schools for African Americans in the Menifee area were available since at least 1919, and when the Great Depression struck these students were centered in East Side School District No. 5’s Conway County Training School, located on five acres about a mile south of Menifee. In 1938, the district succeeded in getting WPA funding to construct a gymnasium for the complex. Construction started in the spring of 1938, …

Menifee, Nimrod P.

Nimrod P. Menifee (spelled “Menefee” in some records) helped to found and settle Conway County, donating the land that was used for the seat of government in Lewisburg in 1831. He also was involved in some of the bitter disputes and duels that were the outgrowth of the early political tensions in the Arkansas Territory. He developed significant land holdings and was instrumental in the formation of several early settlements in central Arkansas including Lewisburg (later Morrilton), Point Remove, Oppelo, and the town that bears his name, Menifee—all in Conway County. Nimrod Menifee was born in 1800. The Menifee family first came to this area from Kentucky, beginning in 1818, when the oldest son, Jonas, bought a one-quarter interest in …

Moose Addition Neighborhood Historic District

The Moose Addition Neighborhood Historic District was the first residential area of Morrilton (Conway County) to be developed. Its center (now known as Division Street) marked the dividing line between the Moose and Morrill farms, whose owners donated land so that the railroad could be built. The district encompasses portions of Division Street, Moose Avenue, Green Street, West and East Valley Streets, Green Street, and Brown Street. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 3, 2013, and is considered locally significant under Criterion C for significant and distinct architecture. The neighborhood’s boundaries encompass thirty-one structures and twenty ancillary buildings. The building composition includes mainly brick and originally wood-sided residential structures, with the exception of …

Moose, James Sayle, Jr.

James Sayle Moose Jr. was an American Foreign Service officer and diplomat. A specialist in the Middle East, he represented the United States in a number of positions in that region, playing an important role in both World War II and early Cold War diplomacy. Over the course of a career spanning more than three decades, he served in posts across the Middle East, joining a select group of diplomatic figures who represented the United States to five or more foreign governments or international organizations. James S. Moose Jr. was born on October 3, 1903, in Morrilton (Conway County) to James S. Moose and Ellen Howard Moose. He received his early education in the local schools before attending Kentucky Military …

Morrilton (Conway County)

Morrilton, the seat of Conway County, is located on Interstate 40 fifty-four miles northwest of Little Rock (Pulaski County). It is home to the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute and the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood In 1820, Major William Lewis and his son, Stephen D. Lewis, settled about a mile south of present-day Morrilton. In 1825, they established a trading post and called it Lewisburg. The new town thrived due to its location on the Arkansas River, and it soon had a large population and numerous businesses, including two newspapers and an opera house. A Masonic lodge served as the town’s first school. From November to December 1836, during the Trail of Tears forced migration, …

Morrilton Male and Female College

In the spring of 1889, the residents of Morrilton (Conway County) put together a fund of $15,000 to build a college in the area. While a site was being selected, there arose the possibility of Hendrix College in Altus (Franklin County) moving to Morrilton, and the original plan to found a new college was abandoned. However, Morrilton failed to acquire Hendrix. Therefore, a stock company with a capital of $25,000 was organized with the intent to carry out the initial plan of building a college. A committee selected a site in the eastern part of Morrilton for the venture. A two-and-a-half-story stone building with arcaded windows and a ninety-one-foot tower was completed in March 1890. Morrilton Male and Female College …

Morrilton Post Office

The 1936 Morrilton Post Office at 117 North Division Street in Morrilton (Conway County) is a one-story, brick-masonry structure on a continuous brick foundation. The building is designed in a simplified treatment of the Art Deco style of architecture. It features a mural financed through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture (later renamed the Section of Fine Arts), a Depression-era stimulus project that promoted public art. The post office was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 14, 1998. On January 16, 1936, the Morrilton Democrat reported that Morrilton was included in a group of seven new post offices to be built in Arkansas. The article said that it would be one story with …

Morrilton School District No. 32 et al. v. United States of America

Morrilton School District No. 32 et al. v. United States of America was a school desegregation case that began in 1972. However, aspects of the lengthy litigation were still being contested into the mid-1980s. The case began in December 1972 when the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the State of Arkansas, the Arkansas Department of Education, the members of the state Board of Education, and the school districts of Conway County, as well as the local school board members and superintendents. The federal government charged that, in the process of consolidating the county’s school districts in response to a federal desegregation order, the school officials had in fact purposely created segregated school districts and, in doing so, had …

Museum of Automobiles

The Museum of Automobiles is located atop Petit Jean Mountain in Conway County. This museum is primarily dedicated to the exhibition of quality antique and vintage automobiles, as well as related items for the cultural and educational benefit of the general public. Additional exhibits include an antique gun collection, a display of Arkansas license plates, and a player piano. When Winthrop Rockefeller made Arkansas his home in 1953, he developed Winrock Farms on Petit Jean Mountain. In 1961, he purchased a collection of fine antique and classic cars from the James Melton museum of Hypoluxo, Florida. He had a building constructed on Petit Jean Mountain to house the cars and named it the Museum of Automobiles. He opened the museum …

Myers, Amina Claudine

Arkansas native Amina Claudine Myers is a noted pianist, singer, educator, recording artist, and composer who gained prominence in Chicago, Illinois, and New York City beginning in the 1970s. She has had a long career in jazz, choral/orchestral music, and theater, and is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame. Amina Claudine Myers was born on March 21, 1942, in Blackwell (Conway County). She was raised by her great-aunt, Emma Thomas, and by her uncle, who gave her music lessons early in her life. She studied classical piano at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Morrilton (Conway County). She moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1949 and kept studying piano. She played for …

Old Hickory (Conway County)

Old Hickory in Conway County is just one of the many rural, unincorporated Arkansas communities that once served as area commercial centers and have since disappeared. Located about fifteen miles northwest of Morrilton (Conway County), the community was perhaps best known for a general store that closed in 1983. The first documented white settler, John H. Jones, was drawn to the area in 1849 by cheap land. On September 22, 1858, a post office was established with Abihu Arnn as its first postmaster. It is said that the long-lost original name for the post office was rejected due to its being too long. One story states that Julius Mackie Washington Masingill, an early settler, then suggested naming the office after the hickory …

Oppelo (Conway County)

Known by thousands of travelers as the “turn-off” or last gas stop on the way to Petit Jean State Park, the small community of Oppelo had its origins many years prior to the development of the notable intersection of Highways 9 and 154. The often mispronounced name also provides recognition for this community of nearly 800. The area south of the Arkansas River in Conway County was negotiable territory in the early days and became a part of Perry County in 1840, when it was known as Aplin Township. In 1873, the Arkansas legislature returned the area to Conway County. Again, the area’s location relative to Petit Jean Mountain was an important consideration in the reunification with Conway County. The …

Petit Jean Meats

Petit Jean Meats is a pork processor and retailer located in Morrilton (Conway County). Family owned since its origins in the late 1920s, the company is the only privately owned red-meat processor still operating in Arkansas. It is also an official sponsor of the Dallas Cowboys football team. In 1922, Felix Schlosser left his native Germany to practice the butchering trade in Arkansas, where some of his relatives had already established themselves. After working at the Little Rock Packing Company and Becker Packing Company, he settled in Morrilton near his cousin, Mary Ruff. He opened a retail meat market with his partner, Ellis Bentley, who sold his share to Schlosser after two years. The small market burned but was reopened …

Petit Jean Mountain

Petit Jean Mountain is the name commonly given to the largest portion of the Petit Jean Mountains, a group of connected landforms south and east of the confluence of the Petit Jean River with the Arkansas River. Although other terrain features along the Petit Jean River are also called Petit Jean Mountain, notably the long ridge that culminates near the common corner of Yell, Logan, and Scott counties, this entry discusses the large mesa on the south bank of the Arkansas River in Conway County. It is part of the Arkansas Valley, one of the six natural divisions of Arkansas, and the home of Petit Jean State Park. A relatively flat top gives Petit Jean elevations that vary from approximately …

Petit Jean Rock Art Sites

Petit Jean Mountain in west-central Arkansas boasts a large concentration of ancient Native American rock art that includes, as of 2023, seventy-six known individual sites with more than 1,000 pictographs (rock paintings) executed in red or black pigments, as well as petroglyphs (rock engravings). The study of this cultural resource began in 1914 when the wife and son of Dr. T. W. Hardison, the founder of the Arkansas state park system, found rock paintings in a cave near their home on the mountain. The pictographs received national attention after 1923 with the establishment of Petit Jean State Park. Discoveries continue to this day, as most of the paintings have been documented just since 2006 with the advent of new photographic …

Petit Jean State Park

The natural beauty of Arkansas’s first state park, Petit Jean, inspired the creation of the state park system. Situated on Petit Jean Mountain, the park encompasses forests, ravines, streams, springs, vistas, and unusual geological formations. Today, Petit Jean State Park is one of the most popular state parks in Arkansas. Popular legend holds that the mountain got its name from the story of a young French girl who, in the 1700s, disguised herself as a cabin boy so that she could secretly join a company of explorers and accompany her fiancé to the New World. Petit Jean, or “Little John,” became fatally ill while the explorers were visiting the mountain and requested to be buried there. The idea of creating …

Petit Jean, Legend of

The Legend of Petit Jean is a romantic Arkansas tale that purports to explain the origin of the name of Petit Jean Mountain. Although there are other explanations that are both more logical and more mundane, when someone refers to “The Legend of Petit Jean,” the person is most likely alluding to the romantic one. According to the story, in the 1700s, a young French girl named Adrienne (or, more specifically, Adrienne Dumont) disguised herself as a cabin boy named Jean in order to follow her beloved to the New World. Because of her small size, the other sailors nicknamed her “Petit Jean,” French for “Little John.” At some point after arriving in Arkansas, Petit Jean became ill, although the …

Plumerville (Conway County)

Plumerville was formed as a stagecoach stop in 1858, but the origins of the community are found along the Arkansas River in the early days of the Arkansas Territory. The community moved from the Harrisburg-Portland bottomland area to follow stagecoach and railroad developments. Samuel Plummer came to the area in 1833 and purchased 160 acres of the “first high ground” north of the Arkansas River. Over the next several years, the development of the Military Road from Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) led to a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail Company and the construction of the telegraph line across this important choice of land. The later railroad also needed to avoid the overflow areas and …

Plumerville Conflict of 1886–1892

During the late 1880s, electoral politics in Conway County turned violent, resulting in serious injuries and several deaths. In the Plumerville (Conway County) community, actions such as voter intimidation and the theft of ballot boxes were flagrant and seemingly condoned by public officials. The violence became widely known and was the subject of a federal investigation after the assassination of a congressional candidate, John Clayton. A pattern of local political affiliations and latent hostilities toward other factions developed and remained well into the twentieth century. While the political conflict renewed itself after the 1884 election, the underlying causes date back to the pre–Civil War days. Conway County was a small version of Arkansas in terms of geographic culture and economics. …

Plumerville School Building

The Plumerville School Building at Plumerville (Conway County), located at 105 Arnold Street, is a circa 1925 wood-frame structure that was remodeled with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program, while serving as a school in 1939. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1992. Plumerville was a leading agricultural center in Conway County and had a well-established school system at the time of the Great Depression. When President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal offered opportunities to improve facilities, Plumerville School District No. 39 took advantage of the funding possibilities and, around 1938, received money to build a new high school building and a gymnasium. The district decided to pursue …

Plummer, Samuel

By the time he was twenty-five, Samuel Plummer had finished an apprenticeship in leatherworking and subsequently traveled to Conway County in Arkansas Territory, where he bought a home and established a business location. The town of Plumerville (Conway County) grew up around his home. (His name was spelled as Plummer in most sources but was Plumer in some, and is Plumer on his gravestone; the spelling of the town’s name is based on the variant spelling.) Samuel Plummer was born on October 3, 1800, in Alexandria, Virginia, in what is now the Washington DC area. Patrick Rodgers, a leather merchant, became Plummer’s guardian when he was seven and started him as an apprentice to learn the trade and business of …

Point Remove (Conway County)

The designation of “Point Remove,” popularly employed to describe the confluence of Point Remove Creek in Conway County with the Arkansas River, is almost certainly derived from the French word remous, meaning “eddy” or “whirlpool.” Most instances of the term in early nineteenth-century documents follow this usage. However, the name “Point Remove” was later mistakenly connected to Indian Removal in Arkansas, supposedly marking the principal geographic point in the description of the boundary of Cherokee land in Arkansas, prior to the Cherokee population’s later relocation to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). William Lovely used the term “point remove byo,” the abbreviation “byo” meaning “bayou” and thus designating the creek, in a public document in 1813. In his book Journal of Travels …

Rice, William (Lynching of)

On November 7, 1891, an African American named William Rice was murdered in Conway County for unknown reasons. News of the event appeared in the Indianapolis Journal on November 9. Citing a report received from Little Rock (Pulaski County) on November 8, the Journal stated that Rice’s body was found hanging from a tree near Plumerville (Conway County) on the morning of November 7. Appearances indicated that Rice had been killed first, and then his body was suspended from the tree. The November 18 edition of the Pilot of Morrilton (Conway County) reported that Rice’s body had been found suspended on a bridle rein on the Springfield and Dover Road near Solgohachia (Conway County) “last Thursday morning.” This would have …

September 30, 1955

Following the success of the film The Paper Chase in 1973, writer and director James Bridges, who was born in Paris (Logan County), turned his attention to a more personal project. Bridges wrote a script based on his college experiences in Arkansas and convinced the studio to allow him to shoot the movie in his home state. September 30, 1955 is about a college student, played by Richard Thomas, who is devastated by the death of his idol, actor James Dean. At the time of Dean’s death, Bridges was a student at Arkansas State Teachers College, now the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), in Conway (Faulkner County). According to his college friend Tom Bonner, a former weatherman at KARK-TV in …

Smith, Less (Lynching of)

On December 9, 1922, an African-American man named Less Smith was lynched in Morrilton (Conway County) for the alleged murder of deputy sheriff Granville Edward Farish. Farish had been in Conway County since at least 1900, when he was twelve years old and living in Welborn Township with his parents, Columbus and Bell Farish. At the age of seventeen, he married sixteen-year-old Carrie Spears in Morrilton. Carrie might have died, because in 1909 he married a woman named Myrtle, and in 1910 they were living and farming in Welborn Township. In 1920, he and Myrtle were living in Welborn Township with their children Thetus (age eight), Cessna (age seven), Harrell (age five), Janie (age three), and Dorothy (age one). As …

Springfield (Conway County)

Springfield (Conway County), once the county seat of Conway County, began as the intersection of the Old Cherokee Boundary Line and a principal route of the Western Cherokee in their relocation west of the Mississippi River. The National Road, from St. Genevieve, Missouri, was routed through the area, taking advantage of a large reliable artesian spring. These roads connected the area with developing population centers such as Batesville (Independence County), Clinton (Van Buren County), Lewisburg (Conway County), and Little Rock (Pulaski County). A small trading post was established that served the first settlers in the area, Cherokee who came in the early nineteenth century. They began clearing farmland plots and established cabins; some of the foundations remain. The trading post …

Springfield Male and Female Collegiate Institute

aka: Springfield College

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, many communities in Arkansas established small institutions of higher learning in an effort to attract and retain young citizens. The small community of Springfield in northeastern Conway County organized the establishment of the Springfield Male and Female Collegiate Institute in the fall of 1887. At the time, Springfield was a thriving community, located at the junction of three important roads. Professor William Beverley Toon, a graduate of Vanderbilt University, was hired as president of the institute. The initial faculty also included Thomas Murphy and a Mr. Trumbul. While the local population composed much of the student population, many “boarding students” came from across the region. While many early schools were affiliated with …

St. Anthony’s Hospital

aka: CHI St. Vincent Morrilton

With a view of the Arkansas River to the south and mountains to the southwest, the original building of St. Anthony’s Hospital in Morrilton (Conway County) (which later became CHI St. Vincent Morrilton) is an imposing three-story Art Deco–inspired structure made of brick and stone. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 28, 1986. The Benedictine sisters at St. Scholastica Monastery established St. Anthony’s Hospital as a fourteen-bed facility on December 4, 1925, initially using a private home belonging to the Burrows family of Morrilton. During the following twelve years, they moved twice, first to a Harding College dormitory (when that school, now Harding University, was located in Morrilton), then to the Jones Hospital building …

St. Vincent (Conway County)

The community of St. Vincent sits on Pigeon Roost Mountain in Conway County. St. Vincent township had an estimated population of 520 in 2022. The area is home to many farms and the Wonderview School District. Pigeon Roost Mountain spans 11,000 acres, with an elevation of over 700 feet. The mountain runs east to west with the western boundary ending in steep drop-offs, while the eastern boundary is marked with creeks such as Prairie Creek and Point Remove Creek. The mountain gets its name from the flocks of passenger pigeons that used to roost on the cliffs and trees during the early settlement period. The land was part of a Cherokee reservation from 1817 to 1828. The reservation was bought …