Entries - County: Pike - Starting with M

Henry Merrell of New York was both an industrialist and an evangelical who contributed to the development of Arkansas and Georgia. He has been credited with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Arkansas, and he also served the state as a Confederate major and as an effective Presbyterian elder. Henry Merrell was born in Utica, New York, on December 8, 1816, to Andrew Merrell, an influential printer, and Harriet Camp Merrell; he had two brothers and two sisters. Merrell began working at the Oneida textile factory in Whitesboro, New York, when he was fourteen. He participated in the religious movement of “The Second Great Awakening” and attended the abolitionist Oneida Institute in Whitesboro. Concerning his 1856 arrival in Arkansas, …

Murfreesboro is the county seat of Pike County, which lies in the southwest corner of Arkansas and is an area of tremendous geological diversity, with regard to both soil and minerals. In addition to mining for diamonds and mining for quartz, other gems and minerals such as amethyst, garnet, jasper, calcite, barite, lamproite, and banded agate can also be found in the area. About 100 million years ago (the Mid-Cretaceous Period), the Gulf of Mexico coastline ran across the middle of Pike County. Murfreesboro, being in the southwest corner of the county, was under water. A volcanic explosion spewed ash and molten rock toward the sky and created an eighty-acre crater. The turbulent rotations of the earth caused diamonds to work their way to …