Entries - County: Dallas

Arkansas Military Institute

The Arkansas Military Institute was one of the earliest schools of its kind in the state. Established in Tulip (Dallas County) during the town’s heyday as the “Athens of Arkansas,” the school instructed male students in the subjects of the day as well as in military history, tactics, and procedures—skills some would eventually employ as Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, an event that would also signal the demise of the institution, as well as the community that supported it. By the mid-1850s, the school had shifted its focus away from military pursuits. In August 1849, George Douglass Alexander established the Alexander Institute in Tulip for the education of both girls and boys. Less than a year later, Alexander persuaded …

Bank of Carthage

The Bank of Carthage is a historic building located in Carthage (Dallas County). Designed by Charles Thompson and constructed in 1907, the same year Carthage was incorporated, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. Carthage was founded as a stop on the Chicago, Rock Island and Southern Railroad. Early residents included members of nearby Lea Ridge (Dallas County), an African-American community founded by former slaves. Many nearby residents moved to Carthage after it was first platted in 1906, attracted by the community’s proximity to the railroad. Railroad-related businesses, timber production, and other agricultural endeavors drove the economy of Carthage in the early twentieth century. With the growing economy, the Bank of Carthage …

Brazeale Homestead

The Brazeale Homestead is a collection of eleven buildings located near the Pine Grove community in southwestern Dallas County. With the earliest dating to the 1850s and the most recent to the beginning of the twentieth century, the complex includes a variety of living quarters and agricultural buildings. Benjamin Franklin Brazeale moved to the area in the mid-1840s. He began farming and constructed several buildings and other structures to support the farm, although the exact dates of construction for many of the buildings are not known. He officially acquired 160 acres of land from the federal government on June 1, 1859. Brazeale acquired forty more nearby in 1880. By 1860, Brazeale lived on the property with his family, including wife …

Bryant, “Bear”

aka: Paul William Bryant

Paul William “Bear” Bryant is one of America’s all-time most successful college football coaches. At the time of his death, he had won more games than any other coach, including the legendary Amos Alonzo Staggs and Pop Warner. Arkansas-born Bryant remains an icon not only for athletic accomplishments but for personal strength, determination, and the will to win. Paul William Bryant was born on September 11, 1913, near Kingsland (Cleveland County) in south-central Arkansas, to William Monroe Bryant, a farmer, and Dora Ida Kilgore Bryant, a homemaker. Bryant was the eighth surviving child (three died at birth) of a total of nine. He had four brothers and four sisters and was the youngest boy, with one sister born four years …

Butler-Matthews Homestead

The Butler-Matthews Homestead is a complex of agricultural structures located near Tulip (Dallas County). Sixteen structures are located in the complex, dating from the 1850s to 1930s. The complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. Alexander Butler arrived in Dallas County from North Carolina in the early 1850s and constructed a home on the property. He first obtained forty acres of federal land north of Tulip in 1855, followed by 160 acres in 1857; the second parcel is the location of the homestead. Constructing a house around 1853, Butler built a thriving agricultural enterprise in the area before the Civil War. By 1850, he owned fifteen enslaved workers and also operated a mercantile …

Captain Goodgame House

The Captain Goodgame House is a historic home located in the Holly Springs (Dallas County) area; it is near Arkansas Highway 128 just north of the intersection with Arkansas Highway 9. Constructed in 1918, the home is a late example of architectural details typically seen on nineteenth-century homes. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. John Goodgame was a native of Bibb County, Alabama. Born in 1828, he moved to Holly Springs in 1851. He married Permila Watkins the following year, and the couple eventually had eight children. Goodgame farmed in Holly Springs until he enlisted in the Confederate army, where he served as an officer in the Thirty-Third Arkansas Infantry Regiment. Goodgame’s …

Carthage (Dallas County)

Carthage is located in northern Dallas County, on Highways 48 and 229. Formed by the railroad and timber industries, it continues to support a working sawmill in the twenty-first century. According to a plaque erected in Carthage in 1976, the area was “a crossroad for settlers in pioneer times due to the abundance of wild game and water springs.” Large plantations grew cotton and other crops, and communities such as Tulip (Dallas County) and Princeton (Dallas County) built schools, churches, and businesses. As part of the Camden Expedition, the Engagement at Jenkins’ Ferry was fought a few miles north of the present location of Carthage in April 1864. The end of the Civil War meant the end of slavery in Arkansas, which changed the plantation …

Charlotte Street Historic District

Located in Fordyce (Dallas County), the Charlotte Street Historic District includes the core of a historic subdivision located on the north side of the city. Constructed from 1906 to 1930 on part of the estate of A. B. Banks, the district includes a number of Craftsman-style homes and associated structures. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 1987. Aloysius Burton (A. B.) Banks was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on April 2, 1868. He moved to Fordyce in 1885, shortly after the town incorporated. He worked in the insurance business and opened his own fire insurance company in 1891. He expanded the company to cover accidents and grew the business, becoming wealthy in …

Compton, Freeman Walker

Freeman W. Compton was an eighteenth-century lawyer from North Carolina who moved to Arkansas and, with his wife’s dowry, acquired a large plantation in Dallas County. He then spent the four years of the Civil War and more as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. The war had a turbulent effect on both his private life and his jurisprudence. While he was on the Supreme Court but living on his plantation ninety miles away from his office in the state’s temporary capital in Hempstead County, Compton escaped capture by the Federal cavalry by hiding for several days in the attic of the only hotel in the nearby town of Princeton (Dallas County). He was disfranchised and booted from the …

Dallas County

Dallas County is a rural county, dominated in its early days by farming, mostly cotton, and then railroads and timber; these industries have accounted for the majority of economic sustenance for residents and landowners throughout its history. Many communities that exist in the county today owe at least some part of their development to the construction of either a nearby railroad, mill, or both. Pre-European Exploration Just prior to European exploration and settlement, Native American tribes, primarily Caddo and Quapaw, lived, traveled, and hunted in the area now known as Dallas County. Several sites identified as burial or other sacred sites have been identified in southwest Arkansas, and some were explored by archaeologists earlier in the twentieth century, including some …

Dallas County Courthouse

The Dallas County Courthouse in Fordyce was erected in 1911. The building is the most elaborate structure in Dallas County to be built in the Classical Revival style of architecture. The courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 1984. On January 1, 1845, Dallas County was established, with Princeton being selected as the first seat of county government. The first courts in Princeton were held in the home of Presley Watts. The first Dallas County Courthouse was built in 1846 on the east side of the square in Princeton. In 1852, a second courthouse was built in Princeton at a cost of $6,000.The courthouse remained at Princeton until 1908, when it was officially moved to …

Dallas County Museum

In September 1993, the State of Arkansas chartered the Dallas County Museum in Fordyce (Dallas County). In the spring of 1995, Frank Hickingbotham, owner of Citizens Bank, donated the old bank building to the museum; the museum materials had previously been housed in a back room at the local Chamber of Commerce. Formerly the McKee Building, the 1907 structure was restored to include a new, native red oak staircase and a new elevator; original bank vaults and safes remain in the building. The Dallas County Museum provides 13,000 square feet of exhibition and office space at 221 North Main Street in the Fordyce Commercial Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. An annex opened in the …

Dallas County Training School High School Building

The High School Building at the Dallas County Training School is located in Fordyce (Dallas County). Constructed in 1931 with assistance from the Rosenwald Foundation, it served African-American students in Dallas, Bradley, Calhoun, and Cleveland counties. Added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 2004, the building was unoccupied by 2001. A school for African-American students began operating in Fordyce in a wooden building in 1918. Designed to serve four counties, the building was overwhelmed, and local citizens explored options to expand the facility. After securing $2,600 from the Rosenwald Foundation, local African Americans donated $300, and public funds of $9,690 covered the balance, giving the cost of construction of the 1931 section of the building a …

Ed Knight House

The Ed Knight House is an enclosed double-pen dog-trot-style home near the Pine Grove (Dallas County) community. Located on a county road near Arkansas Highway 128 about four miles southeast of Sparkman (Dallas County), the home is a good example of small farm house architecture in southern Arkansas. Likely constructed in the 1880s, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. While the Knight family was prominent in the Pine Grove and Sparkman communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, little information is available on Ed Knight. He was born in 1866 in Arkansas and worked as a farmer in various locations in western Dallas County. He was married to Annie …

Elliott House

Located in Fordyce (Dallas County), the Elliott House is a Craftsman-style home in a quiet residential neighborhood. Constructed around 1925, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 1984. Born in Arkansas in 1887, Joe Scales Elliott was the son of William and Missouri Elliott. William owned a dry goods store in Fordyce, and the couple had six children. Joe was the fourth child and the first son in the family. While his name appears in records as Joe, Joseph, and Joel, his name is listed on his gravestone as Joe. By 1910, Joe held employment as a bookkeeper in a general merchandise store, probably the one owned by his father. William died in 1913, …

Fielder House

The Fielder House is a historic home located in Fordyce (Dallas County). The original structure was constructed around 1875, making the home the oldest building in the city. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. Created in 1845, Dallas County is located in south-central Arkansas. Most early settlement in the county took place in the western and central areas. In the southeastern corner of the county, early settlers included Henry Atkinson, an African American man who purchased the land in the 1870s that would become the core of Fordyce. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce was laid out by the Cotton Belt Railroad and served as a stop on the line. Growing quickly, the town …

First Presbyterian Church (Fordyce)

Located on East Fourth Street in Fordyce (Dallas County), the First Presbyterian Church is a Gothic Revival–style place of worship constructed in 1912. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983, although it later closed it doors. Created with six members in 1883, a year before the city was incorporated, the Presbyterian church was the first organized in the new settlement. In honor of that achievement, Samuel Wesley Fordyce, after whom the city was named, donated a bell to the congregation. The church met in a white frame building at the corner of Third and Oak streets until selling the property to the Christian Church and moving to a new location in a …

First United Methodist Church (Fordyce)

Located on East Fourth Street in Fordyce (Dallas County), the First United Methodist Church is a historic place of worship. Constructed in 1925 and designed by John Parks Almand, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce grew as a stop on the Cotton Belt Railroad. The founding date of the Methodist congregation in the city is unknown, but the first pastor arrived in 1883. Before that date, the Methodists worked with the local Presbyterian congregation to offer Sunday School lessons at the Presbyterian church. The congregation purchased land for the construction of a church in 1886, but a land swap later that same year gave the congregation the …

Fordyce (Dallas County)

Located at the intersection of Highways 167 and 79 in south central Arkansas, Fordyce was established in 1882 and named for Colonel Samuel Wesley Fordyce, a railroad builder and developer. It has long been a center for the timber industry in southern Arkansas. Pre-European Exploration Prior to European settlement, present-day Fordyce was inhabited by ancestors of the Caddo. Although no historic Caddo communities existed there, artifacts of Native American life are occasionally found in the area. Louisiana Purchase through Reconstruction Fordyce was a relatively late bloomer in Dallas County as compared to centrally located Princeton (Dallas County), which was incorporated in 1849 and served as the first county seat, and Tulip (Dallas County), which was considered the cultural center of …

Fordyce Commercial Historic District

The Fordyce Commercial Historic District includes the core of downtown of Fordyce (Dallas County). Centered on Main Street, the district included sixty-one resources at the time of its addition to the National Register of Historic Places on May 20, 2008. Thirty of the resources contributed to the district, with six additional sites being empty lots. The boundaries of the district are roughly Fifth Street to the north, Oak Street to the west, Spring Street to the east, and the railroad tracks south of First Street. Incorporated in 1884, Fordyce served as a stop on the Texas and St. Louis Railway, later named the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas, but commonly known as the Cotton Belt. Named for Samuel Wesley Fordyce, …

Fordyce on the Cotton Belt Festival

The small town of Fordyce (Dallas County) celebrates the railroad and its historical significance with the annual Fordyce on the Cotton Belt Festival, which is held each year on the fourth Saturday in April. Along with fun for the community, the festival has a major financial impact on Fordyce and the surrounding area. Joe Bill Meador, a member of the board of directors of the Fordyce Chamber of Commerce, first had the idea for an annual festival. As Meador traveled across the Southern states, he saw how a festival could infuse life into a small town. In 1980, he began discussing the idea with the other members of the chamber. A committee was formed to plan a festival for Fordyce. …

George W. Mallett House

The George W. Mallett House was, for a while, the only antebellum structure still standing in Princeton (Dallas County). Constructed in 1853 as a dogtrot house, the building was modified over the decades. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983, but no longer stands in Princeton. George Mallett was born in Mecklenburg, Virginia, on April 13, 1826, and moved to Arkansas in 1847. He worked as a tailor in Princeton. Before moving to Arkansas, George married Mary Smith in Virginia, and the couple had three sons and two daughters. Evidence suggests that the couple had another daughter who died as an infant. He entered politics and served as the county treasurer from 1852 …

Henry Atchley House

The Henry Atchley House is located in Dalark (Dallas County). Constructed in 1908, the house is notable for its Colonial Revival details. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1983. Henry Adolphus Atchley was born on January 22, 1878, in Princeton (Dallas County) to Robert and Cornelia Atchley. He married Edna Hernsberger in 1908, and the couple had three daughters and one son. Atchley moved with his parents to the Dalark area around 1900. Dalark was founded to provide timber to the Ultima Thule, Arkadelphia and Mississippi Railway. As it is located in extreme western Dallas County near Clark County, the town got its name from combining Dallas and Clark. Atchley owned a general …

Jones, James Kimbrough

James Kimbrough Jones served as a U.S. senator from Arkansas for three full terms after first serving two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. During his twenty-two years in Washington DC, he became a prominent leader in the Democratic Party and a national advocate for lower tariffs and for the use of silver to back American currency. James Kimbrough Jones was born on September 29, 1839, in Marshall County, Mississippi, to Nat Jones and Caroline Jane Jones (whose maiden name was also Jones, although she was not related to Nat Jones). Jones had a younger brother who died in childhood, and his mother died when he was six. His father remarried after moving to Dallas County, Arkansas. Two daughters …

Murry, Isaac Taylor (Ike)

Isaac Taylor (Ike) Murry was a lawyer and politician whose surging career before, during, and after World War II climaxed in a historic confrontation with Governor Sid McMath. Murry was the state’s attorney general who in 1952 led an effort to prosecute McMath or his aides for corruption and mismanagement in the state highway program. McMath tried twice to resurrect his career, losing both times, and the brutal investigation and election ended Murry’s political career as well as McMath’s. Ike Murry was born on May 8, 1913, in Fordyce (Dallas County), the youngest of six children of Isaac Taylor Murry and Addie Pearl Harris Murry. Robust and handsome, Murry was the center and defensive tackle of the Fordyce High School …

Princeton (Dallas County)

A once thriving town, Princeton had become a small community with a population of only thirteen by the 2020 federal census. Although it was the first seat of Dallas County, the town was supplanted by Fordyce (Dallas County) as the leading community in the county in the early twentieth century. Founded in 1845, Dallas County was formed from Clark and Bradley counties. The site for the town was selected later that year, and work began on a courthouse. An early name for the community was Dallastown. Winthrop Colbath received a federal land patent for the area that would become Princeton on July 10, 1848. The eighty-acre plot was divided into smaller lots and sold. Several public structures were built in …

Princeton, Skirmish at (April 28, 1864)

  After Union major general Frederick Steele abandoned Camden (Ouachita County) and led his army back to Little Rock (Pulaski County), Confederate cavalry forces pursued the Federals as Confederate infantry units struggled to cross the Ouachita River. This action at Princeton (Dallas County) was a prelude to the Engagement at Jenkins’ Ferry on April 29–30, 1864. Confederate brigadier general Joseph O. Shelby dispatched the First Missouri Cavalry Battalion on April 28 to determine if the entire Union force had evacuated Camden. Before Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Elliott, commander of the First Missouri, departed, he sent scouting parties in several directions to find the Federals. Upon reaching Tulip (Dallas County), Elliott was contacted by one of his patrols under the command of Lieutenant …

Princeton, Skirmish at (December 8, 1863)

The December 8, 1863, Skirmish at Princeton was part of a Union reconnaissance mission out of Little Rock (Pulaski County) to assess Confederate force strength and movement south of Princeton (Dallas County). The mission was led by Colonel Lewis Merrill under orders of Major General Frederick Steele, commander of Union forces in Arkansas. Merrill was told that Parsons’s Confederate cavalry brigade was camped near Princeton with artillery. Steele sought to have the enemy troops driven away from that position and wanted information about their positions, troop strength, and apparent intentions. Merrill was ordered to “exercise [his] own discretion as to when and how to advance, and also as to what was necessary to be done.” Concerns about the political and …

Redbug Field

Redbug Field in Fordyce (Dallas County) is a high school football field with its significance lying in the fact that future University of Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant learned to play the game there in the late 1920s. The regulation-sized football field was listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places on August 6, 2014. Football is important to the history of Fordyce, a town where Arkansas’s first high school football program was started in 1904 when New York native Tom Meddick organized a high school team at the Clary Training School. By 1909, Fordyce High School also fielded a team. The original playing field was behind the high school, but in the mid-1920s, it was relocated to accommodate a …

Reid, Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Reid was a physician and a colonel in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Reid not only fought during the war—and at one point escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp—he also served at times in a medical role. After the war, he practiced medicine in Arkansas. He moved to Illinois around 1880, where he lived the rest of his life. Thomas Jefferson Reid was born on January 6, 1838, in Caswell County, North Carolina. He was one of twelve children born to Thomas Jefferson Reid and Frances Lightfoot Edwards “Fannie” Reid. Thomas Sr. was a descendant of Major John Reid of Virginia, who had served in the American Revolution. Reid’s mother was well educated and from a slaveholding …

Rolling Stones, Arrest of the

The July 5, 1975, lunch stop and subsequent arrest of Rolling Stones guitarists Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards in Fordyce (Dallas County) is fabled in the town, and the incident became a footnote in the police record of the English rock and roll band. The quintet had cultivated an outlaw image since its early 1960s inception. According to Arkansas native Bill Carter, the Rolling Stones’ attorney from 1973 to 1990, everywhere the Stones went in 1975, it was a challenge for authorities. Riot squads and narcotics units were common during the group’s twenty-eight-city, $13 million-grossing tour. On July 4, the Stones played Memphis, Tennessee. Richards and new member Wood decided to sightsee and drive with two others to their July …

Sparkman (Dallas County)

Sparkman, a small second-class city, is located on State Highway 7 approximately twenty-six miles west/northwest of the Dallas County seat of Fordyce. Once a thriving lumber town, it is today chiefly a farming community perhaps best known for a 1920s and 1930s girls’ basketball team known as the Sparkman Sparklers. Present-day Sparkman is located about a quarter of a mile southwest of the original settlement, which local residents today refer to as Old Sparkman. Lemil Pete Sparkman, who established a lumber mill near the seventeen-mile trunk line Ultima Thule, Arkadelphia and Mississippi Railway, founded the settlement in 1892. On September 19, 1893, a post office was opened with Sparkman as the postmaster. By 1899, the town was home to about …

Tulip (Dallas County)

The town of Tulip, which flourished between 1842 and 1862, at one time was regarded as a center of higher education. Destruction of property during the Civil War and the changed economy of Reconstruction brought a halt to the community, which today consists of a few houses, several churches, three abandoned commercial buildings, and the ruins of one plantation. After Arkansas became a state in 1836, many people came from the eastern United States—especially Tennessee and North Carolina—to settle in the area. For a time, the settlement was called Brownsville, after Tyre Harris Brown; then it was known as Smithville, after Colonel Maurice Smith. The colonel reportedly said that the town should be called Tulip rather than Smithville because, “There …

Tulip Female Collegiate Seminary

aka: Ouachita Conference Female College

The Tulip Female Collegiate Seminary was established in Tulip (Dallas County) during the antebellum period when the community was flourishing. The school instructed female students in the subjects of the day, such as English and music, in addition to drawing, needle-work, and domestic subjects. In August 1849, George D. Alexander established the Alexander Institute in Tulip for the education of both girls and boys. In August of 1850, community leaders in Tulip gathered to discuss dividing the Alexander Institute into two schools, one for girls and the other for boys. Among those prominent citizens was the state representative, Major George Clark Eaton, who represented the interests of those wishing to establish the two schools. On December 17, a legislative charter …

Tulip, Skirmish at

The October 11, 1863, Skirmish at Tulip was a small action in which Union colonel Powell Clayton led men from the Fifth Kansas and First Indiana Cavalry Regiments in an attack that routed Colonel Archibald Dobbins’s First Arkansas Cavalry Regiment, capturing men and equipment. Also captured was a flag that became a prized artifact in the collection of the Old State House Museum. Following the Union occupation of Little Rock (Pulaski County) on September 10, 1863, a delegation of citizens from Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) came to Little Rock and asked General Frederick Steele to establish a garrison there to protect property and keep citizens from being conscripted into the Confederate army. Steele duly ordered Clayton’s small cavalry brigade to …

Waters House

aka: Dr. Waters House

Located on the northern edge of downtown Fordyce (Dallas County), the Waters House is a two-and-a-half-story home designed by noted Arkansas architect Charles Thompson. Named after the original owner of the home, John A. Waters, and his family, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1982. Born around 1858, John Waters grew up in what is now Cleveland County, the son of Alfred and Fannie Waters. The second of seven children, Waters attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and the Missouri Medical College in St. Louis. Upon the completion of his studies, he moved to Fordyce in 1885, where he began practicing medicine. Two years later, he opened a …

Williams, Samuel Woodrow

Samuel Woodrow Williams was an African-American Baptist minister, college professor, and civil rights activist who had a major impact on race relations in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, from the mid-to-late 1950s until his sudden death in October 1970. He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2009. Samuel Woodrow Williams was born on February 20, 1912, in Sparkman (Dallas County), the oldest of the eight children of Arthur Williams and Annie Willie Butler Williams. As a child, he enjoyed hunting, fishing, and playing baseball and basketball, but nothing gave him as much pleasure as reading; over his lifetime, he amassed a collection of more than 1,000 volumes. Lessons about racism came early for Williams. Before he …

Wynne, Robin French

Robin F. Wynne was a lawyer and politician who spent forty-five years practicing in every branch of the law—as a litigator, prosecutor, law professor, and trial judge, and also as an elected member of both appellate branches of the judiciary: the Arkansas Court of Appeals and the Arkansas Supreme Court. He served two terms in the 1980s as a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from his rural southern Arkansas district around Fordyce (Dallas County). Wynne joined the Supreme Court in 2015, just as the Arkansas appellate courts were entering a phase of partisanship that had begun to afflict the judiciary nationally and in many states. Although he had sought political offices as a Democrat, he was determined that …