Entries - County: Mississippi

Hickman (Mississippi County)

Hickman is an unincorporated community in northeastern Mississippi County, near the Mississippi River. It is the easternmost community in the state of Arkansas. In the twenty-first century, Hickman is more of an industrial park than a residential community. Native Americans traveling on the Mississippi River undoubtedly stopped at the future site of Hickman, and some groups may have lived in the area for a time. The first Europeans to see the location were the members of the Marquette-Joliet expedition in 1673. The United States first gained possession of the land through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The river landing was frequently used during territorial times, and a post office named Buford Landing was established there in 1836, the year Arkansas …

Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash

aka: Johnny Cash Boyhood Home

When the Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash opened in 2014, it became the fourth heritage site established by Arkansas State University (ASU) to preserve the history and culture of eastern Arkansas. The site consists of two main structures in Dyess (Mississippi County): the Dyess Administration Building, located at 110 Center Drive, and the Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash, located at 4791 W. County Road 924. The museum allows visitors to explore the construction of one of America’s first and largest New Deal agricultural resettlement colonies, see what it was like to live in the colony, and learn how colony life influenced and helped shape legendary musician Johnny Cash as well as music promoter Gene Williams. The white, …

Holt, Elias (Lynching of)

Elias Holt was murdered in Mississippi County by a gang of disguised men on January 25, 1872, after an accused horse thief implicated him as a conspirator in the crime. Elias Holt, a Kentucky native, was listed in the 1870 census as a twenty-nine-year-old farmer living with his wife, Martha, age nineteen, in Mississippi County’s Big Lake Township. In early 1872, a young man named Jones was arrested and charged with horse theft. During his initial questioning, Jones claimed that Holt had recruited him to steal the horse (with plans to steal another himself), meet him in Jacksonport (Jackson County), and then ride to Texas to get rid of the stolen animals. Jones’s statement, which the Osceola Times decried as …

Huey, Cal (Execution of)

Cal Huey was one of two men hanged for the 1879 murder of a Crittenden County man, though he denied being involved in the crime. On October 26, 1879, four masked men rode up to the home of John Broadway, age fifty-five, about ten miles north of Marion (Crittenden County). One of them was John Potter, who worked for Broadway and believed that Broadway had $300 in his home. When Broadway tried to defend himself, another robber, Hiram Jeffries, shot him down. The four men fled, having netted only eight dollars. Potter, Jeffries, L. L. Ford, and Cal Huey were arrested and charged with Broadway’s murder. Huey got a change of venue for the trial to Mississippi County, but Jeffries …

Island 37

aka: Andy Crum (Lynching of)
aka: Bert Springs (Lynching of)

Island 37 is a stretch of land that is in the legal possession of the State of Tennessee but is physically joined to Arkansas. Because competing claims of jurisdiction left it in something of a legal void, Island 37 became, in the early twentieth century, an outpost for bootleggers and other criminals. Police action taken against those criminals resulted in one of the many U.S. Supreme Court cases regarding ongoing boundary disputes between Arkansas and Tennessee. The Mississippi River is a dynamic waterway, often cutting new channels and thus either forming islands or causing former islands to merge with the eastern or western banks. The legal principle of avulsion holds that land cut off by the river from one state …

Jackson v. Hobbs

In Jackson v. Hobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids mandatory life imprisonment without parole sentences for children. Kuntrell Jackson—convicted of capital murder based on events that occurred when he was fourteen years old—was granted resentencing in which his youth could be taken into account. Jackson was ultimately resentenced to twenty years imprisonment and was released from prison on parole in 2017. Dozens of other juvenile offenders have been similarly resentenced based on this case. On November 18, 1999, Jackson was walking with two other juveniles—fourteen-year-old Derrick Shields and fifteen-year-old Travis Booker—through the Chickasaw Courts housing project in Blytheville (Mississippi County) and began discussing the idea of robbing a local video store. …

Johnny Cash Heritage Festival

The Johnny Cash Heritage Festival is an annual event held in Dyess (Mississippi County), the small town where Johnny Cash lived until he was eighteen years old. The festival, begun in October 2017, features several days of music, arts and crafts, scholarly lectures, and appearances by Cash family members and nationally known performers. The event is sponsored by the Cultural Heritage Program at Arkansas State University (ASU), headed by Dr. Ruth Hawkins. The festival is held in October, traditionally a month of good weather in northeastern Arkansas as well as the period when farmers are harvesting cotton. From 2011 to 2014, ASU held the Johnny Cash Music Festival in Jonesboro (Craighead County), featuring concerts by such country music luminaries as Rosanne …

Joiner (Mississippi County)

The city of Joiner (Mississippi County) is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 61 and State Highway 118, within an area widely recognized for its fertile farmland and its proximity to the Mississippi River and the city of Memphis, Tennessee. There are varying accounts regarding Joiner’s beginnings. One story states that the locale was first associated with a hotel of the same name that was established by Rufus L. Joiner. This account also asserts that the spelling was originally Joyner and somehow evolved into Joiner over the years. However, Rufus L. Joiner’s biography, as published by Goodspeed’s history of the area, makes no mention of his association with a hotel, describing him only as a prominent farmer. On the …

Keiser (Mississippi County)

Keiser is a second-class city in Mississippi County. Located on State Highway 181, Keiser is one of several northeastern Arkansas cities founded by the logging and farming operations of Lee Wilson & Company. Until the early twentieth century, the land that would become Keiser was swampland dotted with hardwood forests. Late in the nineteenth century, efforts began to drain the swamps and to protect the newly claimed land with levees. This process, along with the harvesting of the hardwoods, was accelerated by entrepreneur Lee Wilson. Acquiring thousands of acres of land, Wilson profited from building railroads, clearing trees, and establishing new farmland. He and his company established several cities, naming most of them for family members. Keiser is an exception: …

Keiser Waterworks

The Keiser Waterworks, located northeast of the junction of Water and East Main streets in Keiser (Mississippi County), was constructed in 1936 and installed with assistance from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal public relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 24, 2007. As the United States struggled with the effects of the Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to ease the effects of businesses closing. The act included an organization called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration), which was created on June 16, 1933, to help finance federal construction projects and create jobs. The town …

Kennedy, Cortez

Mississippi County native Cortez Kennedy was considered one of the best defensive tackles to have played in the National Football League (NFL). After an eleven-year career with the Seattle Seahawks, he retired in 2000. In 2012, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2015. Cortez Kennedy was born on August 23, 1968, in Osceola (Mississippi County). He spent his first eighteen years in the small town of Wilson (Mississippi County), where he was raised by his mother, Ruby, and stepfather, Joe Harris. With few activities available in the rural setting, Kennedy turned to football, becoming a star defensive player at Rivercrest High School. His promising …

King, Albert

aka: Albert Nelson

Albert King, one of the most influential blues guitarists of all time, was one of the three so-called “Kings of the Blues”—the triumvirate of B. B. King, Freddie King, and himself. His style of single-string-bending intensity—the essence of blues guitar—is evident in the approaches of thousands of acolytes, including Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Eric Clapton. King was born Albert Nelson on April 25, 1923, on a cotton plantation in Indianola, Mississippi. He had twelve known siblings. His father, Will Nelson, an amateur guitarist, had a major impact on his music. Though he was mainly self-taught, he was inspired by Blind Lemon Jefferson. His singing in a family gospel group at a nearby church also influenced his music. He …

Kream Kastle

The Kream Kastle is a family owned and operated restaurant located at 112 North Division Street in Blytheville (Mississippi County). It has achieved a regional and state reputation for both its food and for its history as a central meeting place in the Blytheville community and as part of the larger Delta culture. A son of first-generation Lebanese and Syrian immigrants, Steven Johns started the business in July 1952 in a small building with window service only. In its early days, the Kream Kastle was a high-volume/low-overhead hot dog stand. As the menu expanded, so did its transition to a full-fledged drive-in. Before outdoor speakers, Johns employed car hops who wore white uniforms in all weather. Later, covered parking and …

Leachville (Mississippi County)

Leachville of Mississippi County was once known as “The Cleanest Town on Buffalo Island, Where Agriculture and Industry Meet.” Established about 1896, Leachville is thirty miles east of Jonesboro (Craighead County) and twenty-eight miles west of Blytheville (Mississippi County). Leachville’s founding fathers were James Wiseman Honnoll, Joshua Gilbert Leach, and Sam McNamee of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Leach and Honnoll incorporated the Leach-McNamee Land Development Company on March 15, 1898. Honnoll named the town in honor of Leach. Although founded in 1896, the town was not incorporated until February 2, 1916. The Gilded Age through Early Twentieth Century The late nineteenth century brought business and industry to the settlement. In 1898, the Cannon family, which had moved to Leachville early on, …

Lee Wilson & Company

Lee Wilson & Company, a diversified agribusiness headquartered in Wilson (Mississippi County), was founded by Robert E. Lee Wilson in 1885 and remained family owned and operated for approximately 125 years. Robert E. Lee Wilson was born in 1865 in Mississippi County but moved with his mother to Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of seven after the sudden death of his father. He was orphaned at the age of thirteen when his mother died in a yellow fever epidemic; he was sent to live with an uncle. While attending school in Covington, Tennessee, he was introduced to land surveying and, through this, developed an eye for land. Wilson returned to Arkansas at the age of fifteen and worked as a …

Lenski, Lois

Lois Lenski wrote and illustrated children’s books throughout her career of more than fifty years. She visited parts of Mississippi County while researching her three books about Arkansas children: Cotton in My Sack, Houseboat Girl, and We Live by the River. Lois Lenski was born the fourth of five children in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893. Her father, Richard, was a Prussian immigrant and a Lutheran clergyman; her mother, Marietta, was a schoolteacher. Lenski attended grade school in Anna, Ohio, and rode a train each day to Sidney, Ohio, to attend high school. After graduating from Ohio State University in 1915 with a BS in education and a teaching certificate, Lenski studied at the Arts Students League in New …

Little River (Northeastern Arkansas)

The Little River starts in the St. Francis Mountains west of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and flows southward through the Mississippi and Morehouse Lowland between Crowley’s Ridge to the west and Sikeston Ridge to the east. After crossing the Missouri-Arkansas state line, it enters the Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Manila (Mississippi County). Running a length of 148 miles, the Little River is a tributary of the St. Francis River, joining it at Marked Tree (Poinsett County). Before the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812, the Little River was a swift, free-flowing stream. In the twenty-first century, it is not much more than a series of stagnant mud holes due to the channeling and ditching of the Little River Drainage District. …

Little River, Skirmish at

Throughout the Civil War, dangerous bands of guerrillas roamed throughout Mississippi County, Arkansas, and the adjacent Missouri counties of Dunklin and Pemiscot, terrorizing citizens with looting, murder, and other forms of lawlessness. Due to the rampant activities of these renegades, composed primarily of Confederate deserters and civilian sympathizers, commerce in affected communities came to a standstill. As part of a concerted effort by Union military commanders to suppress these activities, Captain Valentine Preuitt received orders on April 5, 1864, from Major John W. Rabb (Second Missouri Artillery, Commanding at New Madrid, Missouri) to lead a scouting expedition from New Madrid into the aforementioned districts. Departing camp in the early hours of April 6, Capt. Preuitt’s expedition, comprising Companies G, K, …

Lloyd, Edgar Harold

Edgar Harold Lloyd was awarded the Medal of Honor for service above and beyond the call of duty during World War II. The Medal of Honor is the highest award presented to an individual serving in the United States armed services for valor against an enemy force. Harold Lloyd was born on February 28, 1922, in Yarbro (Mississippi County) to Edgar Bentley Lloyd and Lillian Lindley Lloyd, who were farmers. He had one sibling, a sister named Marvin Emma. Lloyd graduated from Blytheville High School in 1939 and then attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). There, he was president of the Associated Students and active in fraternity and other campus activities. He was captain of Company …

Lowery, Henry (Lynching of)

The January 26, 1921, lynching of Henry Lowery stands out for its barbarism, as well as the national and international attention it received, happening at a time when the U.S. Congress was debating anti-lynching legislation. The brutal murder of Lowery was used in a national campaign to pass such legislation, though this proved unsuccessful. Henry Lowery was an African-American tenant farmer in Mississippi County. Lowery is reported to have disputed a matter of payment with a local planter named O. T. Craig, whose land was adjacent to that of Lee Wilson, owner of the largest cotton plantation in the South. On Christmas Day of 1920, Lowery, forty years old at the time, became intoxicated, according to reports, and decided to …

Luxora (Mississippi County)

Latitude and Longitude:        35º45’22″N 089º55’41″W Elevation:                                  246 feet Area:                                           0.85 square miles (2020 Census) Population:                               942 (2020 Census) Incorporation Date:                June 3, 1897 Historical Population per the U.S. Census: The city of Luxora is located in Mississippi County at the junction of U.S. Highway 61 and Arkansas State Highway 158, twelve miles south of Blytheville (Mississippi County) and five miles north of Osceola …

Manila (Mississippi County)

In many ways, Manila is like other small towns of the northeastern Arkansas Delta. During the 1950s, such towns were vital to the development of the area and provided essential goods and services to farmers and their families, but the mechanization of agriculture led people to migrate to urban areas. In that respect, Manila has not experienced the population decrease of its Mississippi County contemporaries, primarily because “white flight” from the nearby towns of Blytheville and Osceola has led people to relocate to Manila. John U. Needham came to the Manila area in 1868 to establish a permanent camp for his grazing stock. He selected the highest, driest spot of the land that was once a part of the “Great …

Manila Depot Museum and Main Street Historical Museum

The Manila Depot Museum is housed in the old train depot located at the corner of Baltimore Avenue and North Dewey Street in Manila (Mississippi County). The depot was built around 1910 after the original depot was destroyed by fire following a lightning strike. The museum was established in 2001. In 2014, it expanded into another building, which became known as the Main Street Historical Museum. The mission of both museums is to preserve, display, maintain, and interpret Manila’s rich heritage through artifacts, photos, newspapers, personal mementos, and oral histories. The museum seeks to promote education and awareness of the extensive diversity of the area by preserving and promoting collections that reflect the history of the people of Manila. The …

Marie (Mississippi County)

Named for the youngest daughter of Robert E. Lee Wilson, Marie is one of several towns founded by Lee Wilson & Company early in the twentieth century. It is located on State Highway 14 about two miles east of Interstate 55. Periodically flooded by the Mississippi River, eastern Mississippi County was long a wooded swampland unattractive to early settlers of the state. Late in the nineteenth century, Lee Wilson began investing in this unwanted land, seeing its potential for production of wealth, first in timber and then in cotton. After funding a railroad, Wilson began harvesting the timber with his own lumber company. Clearing the land of trees, he exposed rich soil that had been frequently replenished by Mississippi River floods. …

Milligan Ridge (Mississippi County)

Milligan Ridge is a small farming community located along State Highway 158 in the western portion of Mississippi County. It is a part of what is known as “Buffalo Island.” Big Lake and Little River separate the island from the remainder of Mississippi County on the east. The area has the distinction of being one of the last in the state to be claimed for farming from the swampy land around the Mississippi River. A few people inhabited the mosquito-infested swamplands as late as the 1890s. They came to the area to trap, hunt, and fish, or to hide from the law. For example, Lucilius Steven Milligan and his sons, James Riley and Jacob Minton Milligan, were running from the …

Mississippi County

Mississippi County, in the northeastern corner of the state, is named for the river that forms its eastern boundary. It is noted for its agricultural production (especially cotton, soybeans, rice, and corn), which has contributed greatly to the economy of the area and the state. Eight steel-related industries have located in the county in recent years, making it the largest steel-producing county in the nation. These and other industries have chosen Mississippi County because of its transportation system that combines river, rail, and interstate highway movement. Pre-European Exploration Mississippi County was home to many prehistoric cultures. About 800 known archeological sites exist in the county. Numerous Indian mounds can be seen throughout the county, and many artifacts of the Nodena …

Mississippi County Community College Solar Power Experiment

In 1976, the Department of Energy and the Solar Energy Research Institute were allotted funds for a Total Energy Solar Photovoltaic Conversion System that would be the largest of its kind in the world. The location chosen for the project was Mississippi County Community College (MCCC), now Arkansas Northeastern College (ANC), in Blytheville (Mississippi County). The project design included the installation of solar panels, as well as additional funding for the college facility. The main purpose of the project was to build an energy-efficient structure and harness solar power from the panels in order to coordinate, monitor, and manage energy production. With the United States facing an energy crisis in the mid-1970s, President Jimmy Carter created a comprehensive energy plan …

Mississippi County Courthouse, Chickasawba District

The Mississippi County Courthouse serving as the seat of justice for the northern part of the county is located at 200 Walnut Street in downtown Blytheville (Mississippi County). The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the four-story building as architecturally and historically significant for its local standing in Mississippi County. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 6, 1996. After the city of Blytheville was incorporated in 1892, city leaders sought new economic stimulus in the form of transportation. Mississippi County was already an agricultural hub, with cotton as its main product. The Mississippi River, just eight miles away from Blytheville, provided farmers with fertile soil and natural flooding. Lumber was also a major industry when …

Mississippi County Courthouse, Osceola District

The Mississippi County Courthouse serving as the seat of justice for the southern part of Mississippi County is the central feature of a courthouse square bordered by Hale, Walnut, Johnson, and Poplar streets in downtown Osceola (Mississippi County). The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the three-story building as architecturally and historically significant as a prime example of the Classical style in Mississippi County. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 13, 1978. The Mississippi County Courthouse—Chickasawba District, located in the other county seat in Blytheville and opened in 1921, serves the northern part of the county. As Osceola experienced an economic boom due to railroad traffic, lumber, and agriculture production around the beginning of the …

Mississippi County Executions of 1880

A pair of African American men were hanged for the crime of murder at Osceola (Mississippi County) on July 9, 1880, in the first legal public execution in Mississippi County. Armstead Penn of Memphis, Tennessee, was picking cotton in Mississippi County in late 1879 when he befriended George Sanford and Richard McKee, two local Black men. On November 26, 1879, they murdered Penn, “falling upon their victim in a lonely and unfrequented place.” They first shot him in the back, then smashed his skull with a club and “finished and made certain the devilish deed by cutting his throat.” The two men stole about forty dollars from their victim. Penn’s body was found in a wooded area ten or twelve …

Mississippi County Historical and Genealogical Society

The Mississippi County Historical and Genealogical Society (MCHGS) was chartered in 1988 to promote, preserve, and protect the history of Mississippi County. Since its inception, MCHGS has actively fulfilled its mission through continuing efforts to educate the public and garner community support for historic preservation. The origins of MCHGS go back to 1987, when a group of county citizens led by Dr. Eldon Fairley, an Osceola (Mississippi County) physician, petitioned the Mississippi County Quorum Court to appoint a commission that would be empowered to form a historical society. After several organizational meetings, the appointed commission determined it would launch a historical society as well as provide sponsorship for an associated publication. At the society’s charter meeting on April 13, 1988, members …

Murrell, John Andrews

Among legendary characters associated with nineteenth-century Arkansas, John Andrews Murrell occupies a prominent place. Counterfeiting and thieving along the Mississippi River, Murrell was only a petty outlaw in a time and place with little law enforcement. However, he became a greater figure in legend following his death. John A. Murrell was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia, in 1806. His father, Jeffrey Gilliam Murrell, was a respected farmer who, with his wife, Zilpha Murrell, raised eight children. Shortly after John was born, the Murrells and other relations moved to Williamson County, Tennessee. However, Murrell’s father fell on hard times, and his sons, who were wild and errant, began to have trouble with the law. At the age of sixteen, Murrell, along …

Nodena Site

The Nodena Site in Mississippi County is an archaeological site representing Native American life in Arkansas during the centuries before European contact. The twelve-to-fifteen-acre pallisaded village was inhabited from approximately AD 1400 to 1650. The name Nodena comes from a later plantation that encompassed the area, while the names Upper Nodena and Middle Nodena represent separate archaeological sites, as well as separate sectors of the later Nodena plantation. The Upper Nodena Site, the larger of the two, is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been listed as a National Historic Landmark. A vast collection of Nodena materials are held at the University of Alabama Museum and its regional repository, the Arkansas Archeological Survey, as well as at …

Osceola (Mississippi County)

Osceola is located in northeastern Mississippi County on the Mississippi River, approximately fifty miles upriver from Memphis, Tennessee. Osceola is named for Chief Osceola of the Seminole tribe. Local historians have written that he visited the area in 1832 to explore the possibility of exchanging Florida land for Arkansas land, but no historical evidence supports this story. The community was the only county seat of Mississippi County until 1901, when Osceola and Blytheville were named dual county seats. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Originally acquired by the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase, the area was largely populated by Indians. The series of severe earthquakes on the New Madrid fault from December 1811 to February 1812 …

Osceola, Skirmish at

After losing most of his company (the Osceola Hornets, Company G of the Twenty-fifth Mississippi Infantry, later known as the Second Confederate Regiment) at the April 6–7, 1862, Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, Captain Charles Bowen returned to Mississippi County in early 1863 with orders to seek new conscripts to supplement the dwindling Confederate ranks lost to sickness and death. Due to limited success with recruitment and Union control of the Mississippi River (making it difficult to cross), Bowen decided to remain in Mississippi County in order to protect lives and property from the rampant lawlessness that had compromised public safety and commercial activity in Osceola (Mississippi County) and the surrounding areas. Records indicate that he offered his resignation from …

Pemiscot Bayou, Skirmish at

Throughout Mississippi County and the adjacent Missouri counties of Dunklin and Pemiscot, bands of guerillas harassed Union forces, raided farms and communities, and terrorized the citizenry with acts of violence during the Civil War. Composed primarily of Confederate deserters and civilian sympathizers, these combatants hid within the dense swamplands and canebrakes that dominated the landscape, making it difficult for Union forces to pinpoint their exact locations. Determined to disperse these groups and limit their activities, Major John W. Rabb spearheaded an expedition from New Madrid, Missouri, to Mississippi County on April 5, 1864. At 11:00 p.m., with a force of approximately 200 men, he embarked on a steamer and sailed down the Mississippi River to Barfield’s Point (Mississippi County), where …

Phillips, Henry (Lynching of)

On November 13, 1897, Henry Phillips was lynched in Osceola (Mississippi County) for the alleged murder of storekeeper Tom McClanahan. Editor Leon Roussan’s coverage of the incident in the Osceola Times sparked a feud with Sheriff Charles Bowen. Bowen, a former captain in the Confederate army and a local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader, was prominently involved in the Black Hawk War of 1872. According to the Osceola Times, on November 6, Tom McClanahan was brutally murdered in his store. McClanahan had come from Tennessee three years earlier to work in a local sawmill. When the mill was sold, he remained in Mississippi County to settle up outstanding claims. At the same time, he operated a small grocery store in …

Planters Bank Building

The Planters Bank Building is a historical commercial structure located at 200 East Hale Avenue, at its intersection with Pecan Avenue, in Osceola (Mississippi County). Designed in 1920 by Missouri architect Uzell Singleton Branson, the building was originally constructed for the Citizens Bank. Upon the bank’s closure in 1928, the building became the home of First State Bank, which closed in 1930. For a number of years, the building was used by a large mercantile store. In 1943, the City of Osceola leased the building to house its city hall. In May 1944, a citizens’ group that included Congressman William J. Driver of Osceola chartered a financial institution known as the Planters Bank. The new depository took over the former …

Plum Point Bend, Engagement at

The Engagement at Plum Point Bend was fought on May 10, 1862, as the rams of the Confederate River Defense Service attacked the U.S. Mississippi Flotilla, whose vessels were shelling the Confederate fortifications at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Two U.S. gunboats were sunk during the spirited engagement. Following the capture of Island No. 10 on the Mississippi River on April 8, 1862, the U.S. Mississippi Flotilla continued downstream to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and then to an area between Plum Point on the Tennessee side of the river and Craighead Point near Osceola (Mississippi River) on the Arkansas side, from which the fleet’s mortar boats could pound the extensive Confederate works at Fort Pillow. The USS Cincinnati towed Mortar Boat No. 16 …

Plum Point Energy Station

The Plum Point Energy Station (PPES) is a 665-megawatt (MW) energy facility located approximately five miles east of Osceola (Mississippi County). Owned by NRG Energy of Houston, Texas, the station began commercial production of electricity on September 1, 2010, serving members of the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission (MJMEUC) in the Arkansas communities of North Little Rock (Pulaski County), Osceola, and Piggott (Clay County), along with the Missouri communities of Carthage, Kennett, Malden, and Poplar Bluff, plus all thirty-five members of the Missouri Public Energy Pool No. 1 (MoPEP). The Empire District Electric Company, East Texas Electric Cooperative, and Municipal Energy Agency of Mississippi own smaller shares of the company. Development and Construction Spurred by recent economic setbacks in …

Randolph, John (Lynching of)

On July 22, 1875, an African American man named John Randolph was shot by unknown men at Cowell’s Landing (Mississippi County). Randolph and another man were accused of the robbery and murder of Frank Williams, a German man who worked on a plantation named Dickenson’s Mills, which was owned by A. K. Hancock and located on Frenchman’s Bayou forty miles above Memphis, Tennessee. While the Arkansas Gazette published a story datelined Memphis on July 26, a July 31 story in the Osceola Times contained more complete and presumably more accurate information. According to the Times, on Monday, July 19, Williams was paid and then started out for the Shawnee Village landing, located on a plantation of that name owned by …

Rose, Henry (Execution of)

Henry Rose was an African American man hanged at Osceola (Mississippi County) on April 4, 1884, for the shotgun slaying of Dempsey Taylor, a wealthy farmer. The 1880 census shows fifty-year-old Dempsey Taylor, who was listed as “mulatto,” living in Mississippi County’s Monroe Township with his wife Melinda and five children. Henry Rose, a seventeen-year-old Black laborer, lived in the same township with his grandparents, as did John Morrow, age twenty-five, a white farmer who lived with his wife and brother. A Tennessee newspaper described Taylor as “popular with his race, but…regarded as [an] impudent and overbearing person by his white neighbors.” On December 4, 1883, the Arkansas Gazette reported, Rose and Morrow argued with Taylor and “had trouble with …

Roussan, Adah Lee Pettey

Adah Lee Pettey Roussan was a pioneering newspaperwoman who took over the Osceola Times after the death of her husband, running it for twelve years between 1906 and 1918. An indefatigable progressive, she championed political reforms and societal betterment. Adah Lee Pettey was born on July 20, 1859, in Navarro County, Texas, the third of six children of Dr. Francis Marion Pettey and Sarah A. G. Elliot Pettey. In 1870, Dr. Pettey moved his family to Mississippi County, where he practiced medicine. On April 14, 1879, Adah Pettey married Leon Roussan, a printer who had worked at the office of the Ste. Genevieve Plain Dealer and other newspapers. In 1870, he had been one of the three founders of the …

Seals, Frank “Son”

Frank “Son” Seals was a singer who became a driving force behind a brief but stormy rejuvenation of the blues throughout the mid- to late 1970s. For three decades, he dominated the Chicago blues as no one has since. Son Seals was born on August 13, 1942, in Osceola (Mississippi County). His father was musician Jim “Son” Seals. He acquired the nickname “Son” while a child in Osceola. Seals came to the blues early. He grew up in a juke joint operated by his father, who had been a member of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Juke joint the Dipsey Doodle featured some of the greatest of all blues performers, including Albert King, Robert Nighthawk, and Sonny Boy Williamson. The Dipsey Doodle …

Sees, Willis (Lynching of)

Little information exists about the lynching of an African-American man, Willis Sees, in late April 1899, for the crime of arson—specifically, the burning of barns—in Osceola (Mississippi County). A brief account, citing a report out of Memphis, Tennessee, circulated in Arkansas newspapers in early May 1899. The whole account reads as follows: “A special to Memphis of April 30th gives an account of the lynching of a negro named Willis Sees at Osceola, Mississippi county. It seems that a number of barns have been fired within the last few months near Osceola, and suspicion was directed toward Sees. The negro’s wife gave information which led to his arrest.” This account is missing a great deal of information standard to reports …

Semmes, Samuel Spencer

Samuel Semmes was a Civil War veteran, lawyer, and businessman in Mississippi County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He served one term as the county judge. Samuel Spencer Semmes, the son of Raphael Semmes and Ann Elizabeth Spencer Semmes, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 4, 1838. His father, who was later the famed raider of the Confederate CSS Alabama, had moved to Ohio in 1834, marrying Ann in 1837. Semmes was the oldest of their six children. In about 1848, after serving in the Mexican War, Semmes’s father moved his family to near Mobile, Alabama, where Semmes spent his youth. By the early 1850s, he was attending the Jesuit school Spring Hill College in Mobile, …

Sherman Mound Site

The Sherman Mound is one of the larger and better-preserved Native American earthworks in the Central Mississippi Valley. The site is located in Arkansas’s Delta region within Mississippi County. During the Middle Mississippian archaeological period (AD 1200–1400), the Sherman Mound and its associated village was a large, fortified town covering forty-four acres that served as a civic/ceremonial center for a chiefdom-level society. The Sherman Mound site witnessed multiple occupations. Archaeological evidence, principally pottery analysis, suggests Native Americans initially colonized it during the Late Woodland period (circa AD 400–700) when it was a small-to-medium-sized Baytown phase village. The most significant occupation of the site took place during the Middle Mississippian period (AD 1200–1400), when the site was developed into a large, …

Sunken Lands

The term “sunken lands” (also called “sunk lands” or “sunk country”) refers to parts of Craighead, Mississippi, and Poinsett counties that shifted and sank during the New Madrid earthquakes which took place between 1811 and 1812. Because the land was submerged under water, claims to property based on riparian rights by large landowners generated controversy which lasted decades and ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. When the New Madrid earthquakes began in December 1811, the territory which is today northeastern Arkansas was sparsely populated. An early chronicler described the earthquakes’ effect as the ground moving like waves on the land, when suddenly the earth would burst, sending up huge volumes of water and sand, leaving chasms where the earth had …

That Bookstore in Blytheville

In the early 1970s, Mary Gay Shipley, then a schoolteacher, saw a void in her hometown and opened a paperback exchange store affiliated with a Memphis, Tennessee, group called The Book Rack. Ultimately, she found a space in a former jewelry store in downtown Blytheville (Mississippi County). The bookstore has remained at 316 W. Main Street since 1976. Though locals called it “that bookstore” for years, the store did not become officially known as That Bookstore in Blytheville until 1994. The store’s varied selections of fiction, non-fiction, and children’s literature occupy over 2,400 square feet. That Bookstore in Blytheville specialized in Southern writers and books on Southern culture, with emphasis on the work of Arkansas writers. A champion of literacy, …

Tomato (Mississippi County)

The small, unincorporated farming community of Tomato in Mississippi County, located near the Mississippi River in eastern Arkansas, was once touted as being home to the nation’s smallest post office and has been called Arkansas’s only “portable town.” The small but busy river community was established in the late 1800s on high ground inside an 1836 river levee. Cotton farmers were attracted to the area due to the rich soil created by regular flooding. Little information exists regarding the founding of the town; however, a post office was established in 1898. At the town’s peak in the early 1900s, it consisted of three stores, three churches, a schoolhouse, and residential homes. In the early days the town was called Canadian …