Entries - County: Pope - Starting with D

Dover was once the county seat of Pope County and the major site of a series of violent post-Reconstruction events known collectively as the Pope County Militia War. Though its influence diminished after it was bypassed by the railroad in the early 1870s, it remains an important community within the county. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Stories vary regarding the origin of Dover and its name. According to one, Joseph Brearley, who migrated to Pope County in the 1830s, settled near present-day Dover and named the site either after his hometown in Delaware or after the city in England. Another story holds that a man named Stephen Rye settled in the area in 1832 and named the city he laid …

Dwight Mission near Russellville (Pope County) was the first formal Protestant effort directed at the education and conversion of Native Americans in Arkansas and was one of the first Protestant missions established west of the Mississippi. The mission was established in 1820 and operated in Arkansas until 1829. The mission had been requested by Western Cherokee Principal Chief Tahlonteskee in 1818, when he visited Brainerd Mission in Georgia, sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a Presbyterian organization. The Western Cherokee was a diverse group whose previous generation had migrated into Arkansas while fleeing troubles in the Cherokee homeland at the southern end of the Appalachians, and some of the members thought it useful for their …