Entries - County: Marion - Starting with Y

The city of Yellville is the county seat of Marion County in northern Arkansas. Located on Crooked Creek, Yellville has never become a major metropolis, but a family duel in the nineteenth century and a turkey festival begun in the twentieth century have given the city some statewide and even national attention. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood In 1817, the federal government declared parts of the White River and Arkansas River valleys in northern Arkansas a Cherokee reservation. The Cherokee invited other tribes to join them on their land, and the Shawnee of the Ohio River valley were one group who accepted the invitation. One of their settlements was on Crooked Creek, about twenty miles from the White River. An …

The five-day expedition to Yellville (Marion County) in late November 1862 was a successful Union raid to disrupt Confederate saltpeter mining operations and destroy a rebel arsenal. Arkansas’s Confederates mined saltpeter, an important ingredient in creating gunpowder, from limestone caves in the Ozark Mountains, and Union forces periodically attacked the mining facilities, resulting in such actions as the April 19, 1862, Skirmish at Talbot’s Ferry. After learning of saltpeter operations in Marion County in late November 1862, Brigadier General Francis J. Herron sent an expedition from southwestern Missouri to attack them. Colonel Dudley Wickersham of the Tenth Illinois Cavalry Regiment led his regiment, along with the First Iowa Cavalry and a battalion of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry, into Arkansas on …