Entries - County: Washington - Starting with W

Walker-Stone House

The Walker-Stone House at 207 West Center Street in Fayetteville (Washington County) is a two-story red-brick building constructed in 1845. The antebellum structure is one of the few homes still standing in Fayetteville that predate the Civil War. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1970. David Walker arrived in Fayetteville in 1830 and quickly established himself as a lawyer in the new settlement. Elected as prosecuting attorney and as a member of the Arkansas General Assembly, Walker served in the 1836 Constitutional Convention. Acquiring about a thousand acres of land, he became one of the largest slaveholders in Washington County by 1860. Walker constructed a small house near the Fayetteville Square around …

Walker, David

David Walker, a lawyer, a jurist, and an early settler of Fayetteville (Washington County), was the leading Whig in the state’s “great northwest” region for nearly fifty years. He began his career as a member of the convention that wrote the state’s first constitution in 1836. He chaired the 1861 convention, and remained active in politics and law until shortly before his death. David Walker was born on February 19, 1806, near Elkton, Kentucky, to Jacob Wythe Walker and Nancy Hawkins Walker. The Walkers were a prolific and politically prominent family in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Virginia. In 1808, his father moved to Logan County, Kentucky, where in 1811 Walker first attended school. In two years, he memorized the grammatical rules …

Walker, James David

James David Walker served as a U.S. senator from Arkansas from 1879 to 1885. Before that, he served as a judge and as a colonel in the Confederate army. Local historian William Campbell later described him as “a man of strong convictions, sturdy honesty, high principles, and the recognized leader of the bar,” adding that his “knowledge and use of the law was profound, and his pleading before juries was always persuasive.” He had little impact in the Senate, however. J. D. Walker was born on December 13, 1830, near Russellville, Kentucky, the fifth and youngest child of James Volney Walker and Susan Howard McLean Walker. On both sides of his family, he was related to politicians, including congressional representatives …

Walton Arts Center

Walton Arts Center on Dickson Street in Fayetteville (Washington County) is a unique facility not only for its wealth of arts programs usually found in a much larger metropolitan area but also because of the circumstances of its creation. A shared vision, sense of community, and willingness to compromise led to a mutually beneficial union of public and private sectors. In the 1980s, the Sam Walton family donated a $5 million gift toward construction of a performance space at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville for touring shows and other events. At the same time, the city of Fayetteville was considering a multiuse space to accommodate various groups, conferences, and special events. A tax on hotels, motels, and restaurants …

Washington and Benton County Expedition

After the battles of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, the Civil War in northwestern Arkansas settled into smaller skirmishes and interactions between irregular forces on both sides of the conflict. To attempt to control the Confederate guerrillas, Colonel Marcus LaRue Harrison, Union commander at Fayetteville (Washington County), sent out frequent expeditions to hunt down and dislodge Rebels. He also devised a plan to destroy or disable grist mills belonging to or operated by Rebels. Harrison felt that the mills were congregating places for the Rebels and that the destruction of those places would lessen problems with guerrillas. On August 21, 1864, some of the Union troops serving under Harrison prepared to leave Fayetteville on an expedition through Washington and Benton counties. …

Washington County

Washington County, named for President George Washington, is in the northwestern corner of Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. It was established on October 17, 1828, formed from Lovely County, which was part of Indian Territory. Washington County has grown from small settlements of farms, mills, and orchards into one of the most affluent and prosperous counties in the state. The University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville remains the flagship of the University of Arkansas system. Tyson Foods, Incorporated is headquartered in nearby Springdale (Washington and Benton counties) and has become a leading provider of jobs in the region. Given the broad range of manufacturing, industrial, and retail businesses, the population of Springdale is quite diverse, including a large Hispanic community …

Washington County Courthouse

The Historic Washington County Courthouse at the corner of College Avenue and Center Street in Fayetteville (Washington County) is a four-story building in the Richardson Romanesque style. Built in 1904, it is located in the commercial district of the city. It has noteworthy features, such as the steeple that rises above the city, a mural honoring Washington County casualties in World War I, and a bell original to the building. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s marriage certificate was issued at the courthouse in 1975. In the 1990s, most county business moved to a new facility, but the historic courthouse continued to serve the county in some capacities. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1972. …

Washington County Historical Society

The Washington County Historical Society (WCHS), one of the first local historical societies in Arkansas, was founded in 1951 by Walter J. Lemke, a professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). The society has grown steadily over the years and, as of 2010, has more than 700 members in thirty-nine states. The all-volunteer society has a very active and successful living history program, highlighted by the annual “Heritage School,” a week-long class that teaches the heritage and culture of Civil War–era Arkansans. The WCHS has a strong educational outreach program to area schools and students. Local teachers take part in programs offering professional development hours. Annual events such as the Ice Cream Social, the …

Washington County Lynching of 1856

aka: Randall (Execution of)

A mob of white citizens lynched two enslaved Black men, Aaron and Anthony, outside the city limits of Fayetteville (Washington County) on July 7, 1856. Racial terror lynching was a reality across the state, including northwestern Arkansas, during the antebellum period. On the night of May 29, 1856, according to hearsay evidence, Aaron and Anthony attempted to rob and then attacked their enslaver, James Boone, at the door of his home in Richland Township. A third Black man, Randall, enslaved by Peter Mankins and the minor children of David Wilson Williams, was also reported to be involved. By the next morning, enslaved housekeepers were said to have found Boone injured near the entry of his home. Despite the lack of …

Washington County Lynching of 1860

An enslaved man was lynched by a white mob in Fayetteville (Washington County) on May 4, 1860, for the murder of his owner. Jacob Mullis was an Indiana farmer who, by 1850, was living in Washington County’s Mountain Township with his wife Emily and their two children; the 1850 census lists him as sixty-four years old and her as twenty-five and reports that he owned $1,000 worth of real estate. An 1889 account in one of the Goodspeed histories noted that “it was rumored…that he had been a well-to-do farmer in Indiana, and he had left a wife and several children, and that he had eloped with a servant girl.” By 1860, the couple had seven children, the youngest an …

Watie, Stand

Stand Watie was a Cherokee leader who signed the Treaty of New Echota, which led to the tribe’s removal from its homeland in the southeastern United States to the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). Watie also fought for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, becoming the only Native American to achieve a general’s rank on either side during the war. Stand Watie was named Degadoga, which means “he stands,” when he was born on December 12, 1806, near New Echota, Georgia, the son of Oo-wa-tie, who was a full-blood Cherokee, and Susanna Reese, who was half Cherokee. When his father took the name David Watie after his baptism in the Moravian Church, he renamed his son Isaac S. …

Welch, William Blackwell

In the late nineteenth century, physician William Blackwell Welch was a leader in the movement to modernize medicine in Arkansas. A cofounder and first president of the Arkansas Medical Society (AMS), he later led the effort to establish a city hospital in Fayetteville (Washington County). W. B. Welch was born on December 9, 1828, in Scottsville, Kentucky, to Christopher A. Welch, who was a farmer, and his wife, Elizabeth Lyles Welch. In 1829, his family, which eventually included two brothers and three sisters, moved to Somerville, Alabama. He attended schools in Huntsville, Alabama, and studied medicine under his older brother. After graduating from Tennessee’s University of Nashville medical department (later merged with the Vanderbilt University Medical School) in 1849, he …

West Fork (Washington County)

West Fork is a small community in Washington County lying south of Fayetteville along Interstate 49, Highway 71, and the White River. It functions primarily as a suburb of Fayetteville, with local churches, businesses, and a school system that serves many square miles of rural property. Established with the arrival of the railroad in 1885, West Fork has maintained a small-town existence without a significant role in Arkansas history. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood The name West Fork applied to at least two early settlements along the spring-fed headwaters of the west fork of the White River. Settlers arrived by 1828, creating self-sufficient homesteads farmed by extended family groups. The 1850 census for West Fork Township listed ninety-six households with trades …

West, Donald W. (Don)

Donald W. West was a farmer, educator, writer, and folklorist who became a local legend in northwestern Arkansas, especially Fayetteville (Washington County). West moved with his family to the thickly forested mountains, abandoned farmland, and isolated hollows of southern Washington County near Winslow (Washington County) in 1938. He published a memoir about his family’s subsistence farming experience and worked as itinerant teacher. (A different Don West was also a writer and proponent of folk culture and rural life who co-founded the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, in 1932.) Don West was born in Oklahoma on September 12, 1905, the fourth of five children of John West and Mollie West. West was a resident of Garrett, Oklahoma, and Santa Fe, …

West, Muriel

Muriel West was an important part of the emerging literary and arts scene of northwestern Arkansas in the middle of the twentieth century, along with her husband, Don West. She published numerous poems, one novel, and, after finishing her dissertation, scholarly work pertaining to Renaissance literature. She is perhaps most well known to Arkansans from her portrayal in the homesteading memoir, Broadside to the Sun, written by her husband. Muriel Jane Leitzell was born on May 18, 1903, to physician Peter Leitzell and Minnie Musser Leitzell in Portland Mills, Pennsylvania (although her death certificate lists Benton, Wisconsin—likely an error). She had one brother, Ted Leitzell, who became a writer. She received a BA from the University of Wisconsin in 1924. …

West, Timothy (Tim)

Tim West was a reclusive artist who lived and worked in the woods near Winslow (Washington County) for more than forty years. The son of writers Don West and Muriel Leitzell West, who had homesteaded in the Winslow area beginning in 1938, West completed a graduate degree in art before pursuing his very private life as an eccentric sculptor, painter, and ink artist near the land where he roamed as a young boy. Timothy (Tim) West was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 7, 1937, before coming to Arkansas as a baby with his parents and older sister Petra. Homeschooled as a child by his mother, West eventually attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). …

White River, Skirmish at (March 22, 1863)

  The skirmish at the head of the White River near Fayetteville (Washington County) was a small setback for the Union forces. On March 22, 1863, Colonel Marcus LaRue Harrison dispatched thirty-five Union men—twenty-five soldiers and ten citizens—to assist a beef contractor in receiving his livestock. Upon their arrival, the Union forces were attacked on three sides by a Confederate regiment of 200 men from Clarksville (Johnson County) under the command of Major Hall S. McConnell. A citizen in the area had informed the Confederate scouts of the Union location. Since Union forces did not expect to come across Confederates, they failed to set up a picket line, which Col. Harrison blamed on carelessness. In addition, Union forces on this mission …

Whitehead, James Tillotson (Jim)

James Tillotson Whitehead was a Mississippi-reared athlete who received a classical education at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee to prepare himself for a career writing poetry and fiction and teaching in Arkansas. He won some literary acclaim for his single completed work of fiction, the novel Joiner, and published four books of poetry. With his Vanderbilt pal William Harrison, he started the creative-writing program at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). Jim Whitehead was born on March 15, 1936, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Dick Bruun Whitehead and Ruth Ann Tillotson Whitehead. The family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, at the end of World War II, and Whitehead attended school there. His large size, strength, and agility …

Williams, John Gilbert

A champion of the modern approach to architectural design, John Gilbert Williams was an architect, landscape architect, and the founding faculty member of the Department of Architecture at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). John G. Williams was born on April 30, 1915, in Van Buren (Crawford County) to Vera Jane Wallace Williams and Charles Bunyan Williams; he had one older brother. He studied engineering at Arkansas Polytechnic College (now Arkansas Tech University) in Russellville (Pope County) before pursuing his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University). After graduating in 1940, he returned to Russellville to teach drawing and math at Arkansas Polytechnic College for two years. While in Russellville, he …

Williams, Lucinda

Lucinda Williams is one of America’s most critically acclaimed songwriters and recording artists, as well as the daughter of poet Miller Williams. She has won three Grammy Awards and is considered a leading light of the so-called “alt-country” movement. Her songs, with their simple chord structures and gorgeous melodies, incorporate elements of rural blues, traditional country, and rock and roll. They are distinguished by evocative, plain-spoken lyrics that investigate the human mystery. In 2002, Time magazine called her “America’s best songwriter.” Lucinda Williams was born on January 26, 1953, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Her mother was Miller Williams’s first wife, Lucille Day. With her professor father moving from job to job, Williams grew up in southern towns such as Vicksburg, …

Williams, Miller

aka: Stanley Miller Williams

Stanley Miller Williams, known professionally as Miller Williams, was one of the foremost American poets of the post–World War II era. For thirty-three years, he was a professor of English, foreign languages, and comparative literature at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) and was a key figure in the university’s nationally known programs in creative writing and translation. He was the author, editor, or translator of over thirty volumes of poetry, literary criticism, and fiction. Miller Williams was born on April 8, 1930, in Hoxie (Lawrence County) to Ernest Burdette and Ann Jeanette Miller Williams. In his early years, he lived in five Arkansas towns, where his father served as a Methodist minister. After graduating from high …

Wilson, Charles Banks

Charles Banks Wilson was a world-renowned lithographer, painter, teacher, historian, and book illustrator whose art has been exhibited throughout the United States and the world. He is best known for his drawings and paintings of Native American life as well as for his vivid representations of the people, events, and landscapes of the Ozark Mountains, his primary artistic inspiration. Charles Banks Wilson was born on August 6, 1918, in Springdale (Washington County). His father, Charles Bertram Wilson, was serving in France during World War I when Wilson was born. His mother, Bertha Juanita Banks Wilson, was a public school teacher. Both parents had lived in Springdale but did not meet until each had moved eighty-five miles westward in the Ozark …

Wilson, Charles Morrow

A native of Fayetteville (Washington County), Charles Morrow Wilson was a nationally known freelance author. While the majority of his many books and magazine articles were on international trade, agriculture, and medicine topics, a significant number were on Arkansas culture and politics. Charles Wilson was born in Fayetteville on June 16, 1905, to Joseph Dixon and Martha (Mattie) Maude Morrow Wilson. He was educated in Fayetteville Public Schools and graduated from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville in 1926. Wilson began writing when he was still a student, and author Charles J. Finger became his mentor. Wilson was included in the group of writers, artists, and scientists who frequently gathered at Finger’s home near Fayetteville, and he was associated …

Wilson, Donald Roller

Donald Roller Wilson is a nationally acclaimed artist whose paintings use distinctive and mysterious imagery. He lives in Fayetteville (Washington County). Roller Wilson was born on November 23, 1938, in Houston, Texas. At the age of six, he moved with his family to northern Nebraska when his father opened a company that made farm combines. In 1945, the family moved to Wichita, Kansas. The last of three children, he grew up essentially an only child because his brother and sister were much older. His first artistic experience was painting signs on beer trucks. After earning an MFA in painting and art history at Kansas State University in Wichita, he taught painting at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville from …

Winslow (Washington County)

Winslow (Washington County) was reported to be the highest railroad pass on the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway line between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The elevation helped make Winslow a popular summer resort area for decades. Pre-European Exploration though Louisiana Purchase Southern Washington County has been inhabited for roughly 12,000 years. In the 1700s, the Osage claimed the land from the Arkansas River north into what is now central Missouri. Their main villages were in Missouri, but they traveled to north Arkansas to hunt. In the early 1800s, settlers began to move north from the river and south from Missouri Territory into the mountains of what is now northwestern Arkansas. Reconstruction through the Gilded Age The stage lines became an …

Winslow Tunnel

In September 1880, the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway Company (Frisco) created a railroad subsidiary, the Missouri, Arkansas and Southern Railway of Arkansas. The new subsidiary was authorized “to build in a southerly direction”—likely from Fayetteville (Washington County)—“to some point on the Little Rock & Fort Smith Railway, not east of Clarksville, with total mileage of about 55 miles.” The Little Rock and Fort Smith (LR&FS) in 1876 began rail service between Argenta—now North Little Rock (Pulaski County)—and Van Buren (Crawford County). The broad language of the authorization clearly reflected the uncertainty in constructing a railroad line through the Boston Mountains range of the Ozark Mountains, the highest range between the Alleghenies and the Rockies. The range, the highest elevation of …

Witte, Albert Matthew Francis

Albert Witte was a longtime professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County) and a one-time president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). He also was a central figure in the hiring of Bill Clinton, fresh out of law school, to teach at the university. Albert Matthew Francis Witte was born on October 25, 1923, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Albert M. Witte and Sara E. Witte. He spent most of his youth in Erie, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Erie East High School and in 1942 enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He flew thirty-five missions as a second lieutenant bombardier with the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy during World War II, earning the …

Wolfe, Savannah Janine (Savvy) Shields

Savannah Janine (Savvy) Shields Wolfe, originally from Fayetteville (Washington County), was a pageant winner who became a public speaker, celebrity media presence, and artist. In 2016, as Savvy Shields, she won the title of Miss America 2017. She thus became the third Miss America from Arkansas, joining Donna Axum, who won the title in 1964, and Elizabeth Ward, the 1982 winner.  Savannah Janine (Savvy) Shields was born in Fayetteville on July 1, 1995. Her parents were homemaker Karen Shields and Todd Shields, a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville and later dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. At age fourteen, Shields won the title of Miss Arkansas’ Outstanding Teen 2009, going …

Women’s Library

The Women’s Library was formed in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1982. Completely volunteer based and operated, the library lent books, musical recordings, and local and national periodicals that supported women’s rights and self-education. Many of these materials could not be found at the Fayetteville Public Library or in local bookstores, and so the library was a central resource for early gender and women’s studies courses at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville. The library sponsored special events like book and craft fairs, live music, and poetry readings in its space. In addition, it donated materials to women’s prisons and to the Women’s Project in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The library closed in 2000. The Women’s Library was created by …

Woo Pig Brie

Woo Pig Brie is a pig’s milk cheese produced in Arkansas starting in 1969. It is a product licensed with the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), with the name “Woo Pig Brie” being a pun on the famous “hog call”—Woo Pig Sooie—associated with UA’s Razorbacks football team. Woo Pig Brie is probably the most successful dairy product in the nation licensed with a college football team. (Morehead State’s “Morehead Cheese” is not technically a cheese, despite the name.) Woo Pig Brie had its genesis in one of the Razorbacks’ most memorable games, the 1969 contest with the number-one Texas Longhorns later dubbed “The Big Shootout.” The game was attended by such national figures as President Richard M. …

Woolsey Farmstead Cemetery

The Woolsey Farmstead Cemetery is located in western Fayetteville (Washington County), near the Woolsey Wet Prairie Preserve. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 2020. The small family cemetery, which covers less than one acre, is in the northeastern corner of an open field that was originally part of the farmstead of the Woolsey family, who were early settlers in the area of present-day Farmington (Washington County), arriving in 1830. There is a small grove of trees within the bounds of the cemetery, which causes it to stand out from the surrounding fields. The area around the cemetery that is not cultivated fields is densely wooded. Within the wrought-iron fence, there is a large …