Entries - County: Ouachita - Starting with F

John R. Fellows was a lawyer, noted for his oratorial skills, in Camden (Ouachita County). He served in the Confederate army before moving to New York, where he was elected to the U.S. Congress. John R. Fellows was born on July 29, 1832, in Troy, New York. He was one of seven children of Tisdale E. Fellows and Elizabeth Harris Fellows. In 1850, at age eighteen, he moved to Camden at the invitation of his uncle Daniel Fellows, who was a merchant there. He studied law in the offices of Judge Abner A. Stith and was admitted to the bar in 1855. Fellows was a gifted orator, and when he was serving as a presidential elector for John Bell and …

Present-day Camden (Ouachita County) has its origins in a 1782 settlement established by Don Juan Filhiol, a Frenchman who served the Spanish colony of Louisiana. Ecore a Fabri, as Camden was originally known, was Filhiol’s first established settlement in the Ouachita District, which encompassed today’s southern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana. Filhiol is credited with introducing the rule of law to the Ouachita River area in Arkansas and Louisiana. Don Juan Filhiol was born Jean Baptiste Filhiol on September 21, 1740, in Eymet, France, to François Filhiol and Anne Marie Teyssonniere, who were cloth merchants and Calvinists. In 1763, at the age of twenty-three, Filhiol left France to seek his fortune in Santo Domingo, a French colony (present-day Haiti). He decided …

Forts Lookout and Southerland are large earthen redoubts constructed in early 1864 to defend Camden (Ouachita County) from Federal attack during the Civil War. The forts were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 19, 1994, and designated as National Historic Landmarks on the same date as components of the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark. In late 1863, following the September 10 capture of Little Rock (Pulaski County), Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith, Confederate commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, ordered Lieutenant General Theophilus Holmes to concentrate his forces along the Ouachita River to defend the approaches to Shreveport, Louisiana, against any Union advances to the south. Holmes, in turn, ordered Brigadier General Alexander T. Hawthorn, a …

Frenchport (Ouachita County) is an unincorporated community located about eight miles southeast of Camden (Ouachita County). The current channel of the Ouachita River is located about two miles east of the community. Originally based close to the river, the community moved west as better roads linked the community to Camden. Arkansas Highway 7 runs to the west of the community. Early settlers in the area included the Fogle, Labeff, and Peveto families. Originally residents of France, the families traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and moved up the Mississippi, Red, Black, and Ouachita rivers to the area. Finding a logjam on the river that prevented further movement, the families settled in the area. The name of the community comes from the …

Lela Rochon Fuqua, whose professional name is Lela Rochon, has appeared in nearly fifty movies and television shows, starring alongside some of Hollywood’s elite actors, including Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Gene Hackman, Whitney Houston, Timothy Hutton, Eddie Murphy, and Tupac Shakur. She is a member of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. She was born Lela Rochon Staples in Torrance, California, on April 17, 1964, to Samuel Staples and Zelma Staples of Camden (Ouachita County). Her parents, both alumni of Lincoln High School, attended Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). Her father graduated from Arkansas AM&N and went on to own and operate Aladdin Enterprises, a graphic-arts business in California, from …