Entries - County: White - Starting with G

Garner is a town in southern White County on Highway 367, not far from Highway 67. Though the area was first settled around 1850 and became a stop on the Cairo and Fulton Railroad in the nineteenth century, the town did not incorporate until 1971. William Brown Walker received legal title to land in White County in 1841, and by 1850, he had built a house and established a cotton farm on that land. His homestead, with several houses added over the years, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Walker and his family owned slaves until the Civil War; after the war, some of the freed slaves remained on the land as tenant farmers. The …

Georgetown is a small town located on the White River in the extreme southeastern corner of White County, about seventeen miles southeast of Searcy (White County). White County historians claim it to be the oldest existing town in Arkansas and only the second settlement established in the state, after Arkansas Post. Georgetown traces its establishment as a town to the arrival of its first permanent settler in 1789. Georgetown received its current name in 1909 in honor of three men from Clarendon (Monroe County) surnamed George who, a few years earlier, had purchased, sold, and developed land in the town. The town was previously called Francure Township, as well as Negro Hill or Nigger Hill, probably indicative of the first …

Lonnie Glosson popularized the harmonica nationwide and had a hand in several hit songs during a time when radio stations employed harmonica orchestras. From a young age, Glosson’s ability and versatility on the harmonica stood out. Lonnie Elonzo (Marvin) Glosson was born the seventh of eleven children on February 14, 1908, in Judsonia (White County) to Cora Busby Glosson and George H. Glosson. He later changed his middle name to Elonzo because he did not like the uncle after whom he was named. Glosson’s mother taught him the harmonica after he earned money to buy the instrument by picking cotton: “She showed me how to play ‘Home Sweet Home,’ and I took it from there.” His father owned a boat …

The Grand Army of the Republic Monument located in the north-central section of Evergreen Cemetery in Judsonia (White County) was erected in 1894 by the W. T. Sherman Post No. 84 of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). It is one of three such monuments known to have been erected in Arkansas, the others being in Siloam Springs (Benton County) and Gentry (Benton County). The Grand Army of the Republic was a national organization of Union Civil War veterans initially formed to help the widows and orphans of fallen Union servicemen and to support the Republican Party; it later focused upon promoting patriotic activities and decorating the graves of the war dead. The first GAR camp was established in …

The Great Lester Boggs is a ninety-four-minute feature film directed by Arkansas filmmaker Harry Thomason and shot on location around central Arkansas, particularly Beebe (White County). It was released in late 1974 by Thomason’s company, Centronics International, and carried a rating of PG. The film was later re-released to various areas of the United States under different titles, including The Hard Heads, Hootch Country Boys, and Redneck County. One of its promotional taglines was “Learn about life the hard way.” The plot, by writers Don McLemore and Harry Thomason, concerns a young man named Malcolm Vandiver who embarks on a cross-country motorcycle journey. When, as almost all reviews note, his trip “boggs” down in the fictional Mountain Glen (in the …

Griffithville is a town in southeastern White County. It is located at the intersection of State Highways 11 and 385. The first settler in the area that became Griffithville is recorded in census records only as C. Brewer. He owned about 1,500 acres, most of which was forested, but he cultivated about 100 acres and owned about 100 slaves. About a dozen families came from Tennessee in the 1850s to clear land and farm near Brewer’s land. Ten men from the area enlisted at Searcy (White County) in the Confederate army during the Civil War; all ten returned home at the end of the war. The first school was built in the area around 1867. The teacher was Joshua Pence, …

Griffithville School was a one-story, brick-veneered building constructed in 1939 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 13, 1992, and demolished some years later. Griffithville (White County) had its beginnings as a farming community called Dogwood Township in the 1850s. The first school was established in the area in 1867, and School District No. 1 was created six years later, with its school known as Dogwood School. The Griffithville Special School District was formed on December 7, 1900, and the existing school was expanded from one to four rooms; by the 1920s, it offered classes up to tenth grade. Eleventh and twelfth …