Entries - Starting with Y

Y City (Scott County)

Y City is an unincorporated community in southern Scott County located along Highway 71. Y City was established along Mill Creek, a tributary of the Fourche La Fave River. The community’s name is derived from the Y-shaped formation where Highway 270 splits off from Highway 71. Agriculture and tourism have been important to Y City’s economy and way of life. Prior to European exploration, the area surrounding Y City was a wilderness. Several species of wildlife that no longer inhabit the area, such as elk and buffalo, were present throughout the region. Archaeological findings have provided evidence of early inhabitants dating to the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods. Further archaeological evidence has indicated that the people of the Caddo tribe …

Yale Camp

Approximately one mile east of Crossett (Ashley County), just off U.S. Highway 82, is the site of what was once an important adjunct to the Yale University School of Forestry. Built in 1946, the spring camp for Yale students of forest management provided a hands-on educational experience until its closure in 1966. In the early 1900s, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was perhaps an unlikely location of the nation’s premier school of forest management. To supplement work in the classroom, the school provided a spring field trip to southern forests, visiting as the guest of a different lumber company each year, since northern forests might still be under snow at the time of the field trip. The first trip …

Yancey v. Faubus

Yancey v. Faubus 238 F. Supp. 290 (1965) was a legal case involving legislative reapportionment in Arkansas in the aftermath of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court that not only established the principle of “one person, one vote,” but also determined that, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, that principle was applicable to the apportionment for representation in the state legislatures as well. The challenge to the apportionment process in Arkansas originated in a suit filed by John Yancey on July 15, 1964, exactly one month after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Reynolds v. Sims 377 U.S. 533 (1964). Yancey, a registered voter in Pulaski County, filed suit against Governor Orval Faubus, Secretary of State Kelly …

Yancey, John Howard

John Howard Yancey was one of Arkansas’s most colorful war heroes. His actions in the South Pacific in World War II and the Korean War garnered him two Navy Crosses, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. He was a champion of civil rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Arkansas. John Yancey was born on April 27, 1918, in Plumerville (Conway County) to Mary and John Benjamin Yancey, who owned a gas station; his younger brother, John Benjamin Yancey Jr., became a Little Rock (Pulaski County) police officer. He attended what is now Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) but left college in 1942 to join the Marine Corps as World War II was beginning. After basic …

Yancey, William (Lynching of)

William Yancey, accused of being a horse thief, was attacked by a mob and hanged in western Bradley County while being transported from the jail in Hampton (Calhoun County) in 1879. William Yancey, a white man described as “a somewhat notorious and disreputable character,” was arrested in May 1879 in Calhoun County on charges of stealing horses. On May 17, lawmen removed him from the jail in Hampton, with sources varying regarding whether he was to be taken to Princeton (Dallas County) to face other charges or to a jail in Bradley County because the Hampton lockup was not secure. Whatever the case, he was taken to the Lagle Creek bottoms in Bradley County and hanged. The Goodspeed history of …

Yancopin (Desha County)

Yancopin of Desha County is a historic community marked by the only railroad bridge over the Arkansas River between Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and the Mississippi River. The town at its peak had a railroad station, two churches, three stores, a post office, a cotton gin, and a small school for white children. Black students attended school in a church building after 1915 until a school was built for them in Watson (Desha County) around 1950. Yancopin was never incorporated and was never really considered a “town.” It was, however, platted in the late 1800s after the former county seat, Napoleon (Desha County), was washed into the Mississippi River. The platted town was to be called New Napoleon, but lots were never …

Yarbrough, Anna Nash

Anna Idelle Nash Yarbrough was a prolific author and internationally recognized poet from El Dorado (Union County). She wrote for many publications, including the Arkansas Democrat, the Arkansas Gazette, and the Benton Courier, from the early 1930s until her death in 1993. She wrote one book of poetry, Flower of the Field (1962), and three books on the mechanics of poetry: Building with Blocks: How to Write Poetry with the Easy Block System (1965), Poetry Patterns (1968), and Syllabic Poetry Patterns (1978). She also co-authored a book of poetry, Laurel Branches (1969). Anna Idelle Nash was born on January 19, 1897, in El Dorado to Jessie Lee Cook Nash and Lelus Mecanlus Nash. Her paternal grandparents were also literary figures, …

Yarbrough, Arthur Jean Wilker

Jean Yarbrough was a film and television director and producer who worked on numerous low-budget films, or “B-movies,” mostly for Hollywood’s so-called “Poverty Row” studios beginning in the 1930s. In the 1950s, he transitioned successfully to television, directing many episodes of several popular TV series, including The Addams Family, Death Valley Days, Gunsmoke, The Life of Riley, McHale’s Navy, and Petticoat Junction. Known more for his efficiency than his artistry, he may be best remembered for his directorial work with the Abbott and Costello comedy team on feature films as well as their 1952–1954 television series. Arthur Jean Wilker Yarbrough was born on August 22, 1900, in Marianna (Lee County). He was the only child of William T. Yarbrough and …

Yarnell’s Ice Cream Company

Yarnell’s Ice Cream Company, headquartered in Searcy (White County), maintained operations through four generations of the Yarnell family from 1932 to 2011. The only ice cream-producing company in Arkansas, it had branches in Fort Smith (Sebastian County), Hot Springs (Garland County), Paragould (Greene County), Texarkana (Miller County), and West Memphis (Crittenden County). The company closed amid bankruptcy in 2011, but was purchased in 2012 by Schulze and Burch Biscuit Co. and relaunched in April 2012. The predecessor of Yarnell’s, the Grisham Ice Cream Company, produced Grisham’s Angel Food Ice Cream. Grisham was headquartered at Searcy in 1923, though it had plants in McGehee (Desha County) and Morrilton (Conway County). The company merged in 1927 with the Terry Dairy Co., which had locations …

Yell County

Yell County, Arkansas’s forty-second county, was formed on December 5, 1840, from portions of Scott and Pope counties. Located in west-central Arkansas, the county has a northern portion adjacent to the Arkansas River and is part of the Arkansas River Valley geographic region, while the southern and most of the eastern portions are within the Ouachita National Forest, and a small portion of eastern Yell County is within the Ozark St. Francis National Forest. Named for Governor Archibald Yell, the county boasts a forest products and lumber industry, poultry production and processing, row crops, and livestock production. European Exploration and Settlement Hernando de Soto’s expedition encountered strong resistance at Tula in 1541, which archaeologists generally believe to be near the …

Yell County Courthouse, Dardanelle Judicial District

The Yell County Courthouse for the Dardanelle Judicial District, governing the northern part of Yell County, is located on the west end of Union Street in Dardanelle (Yell County). The Arkansas River and the River Front Park are nearby, and the courthouse is surrounded by county buildings, historical markers and monuments, small businesses, and residential neighborhoods. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the courthouse as architecturally and historically significant to Yell County, as it stands as the best example of the Classical Revival style in the area. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 8, 1992. Timber—including cottonwood, gum, elm, sycamore, and ash—made up much of Dardanelle and Yell County’s economy. The city became a …

Yell County with Skirmishes, Scout in

Troops of the Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) undertook a scouting expedition to Yell County in late 1864 to seek information on enemy activities in the region and to search for the many guerrillas operating in the county. The Third Arkansas Cavalry (US) established a base at Lewisburg (Conway County) on June 30, 1864, from which they sent out regular patrols in search of Confederate guerrillas and irregular troops. Captain Bright W. Herring, who had mustered into the Third Arkansas in Yell County in October 1863, left Lewisburg on an expedition to Yell County on July 25, 1864. The Third Arkansas troopers likely were from Herring’s own Company F and from Company H, which reported in July and August that the …

Yell, Archibald

Archibald Yell, a larger than life and colorful figure in Arkansas history, was Arkansas’s first congressman, second governor, founder of Arkansas’s first Masonic lodge, and Mexican War hero. He was a consummate, magnetic politician. Yell County and Yellville (Marion County) were named for him. Archibald Yell is believed to have been born in Jefferson County, Tennessee, in 1797, although North Carolina appears on his tombstone and Kentucky can be found in newspaper accounts. Yell himself wrote that he was born in Tennessee, although he could not spell that word or anything else above two syllables correctly. Best evidence indicates August 7, 1797, not 1799, as his date of birth. His parents—Moses and Jane Curry Yell—settled in the Duck River region …

Yell, James

James Yell was a lawyer, state legislator, and major general in the Arkansas State Militia during the Civil War. Never holding an active field command, he was removed from his position early in the war because of his allegiance to state troops rather than the Confederate government. He did not see action in the war. James Yell was born on March 10, 1811, in Bedford County, Tennessee. He was the son of Pearcy Yell and Jane Gist Yell, and he was the nephew of Archibald Yell, Arkansas’s first congressman and second governor. Receiving some education, he taught school for three years and also served as a magistrate in Tennessee. He married Permelia Young in Bedford County in 1832, and the …

Yellow Fever

In 1878 and 1879, Southern cities such as Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, were devastated by epidemics of yellow fever. Citizens of Arkansas were also affected by the disease, leading to controversial quarantine measures that prohibited travel in parts of the state and also restricted the transportation of materials such as recently harvested cotton. The creation of the Arkansas State Board of Health resulted from successful efforts to protect Arkansans from the 1879 yellow fever epidemic. Yellow Fever (colloquially called “Yellow Jack”) is a potentially fatal virus that mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) transmit to their human hosts through their bite. It attacks the body’s organs, mainly the liver, which causes jaundice, a yellowing of the patient’s skin and whites of …

Yellow Horse, Moses J. “Chief”

Moses J. “Chief” Yellow Horse (sometimes rendered YellowHorse or Yellowhorse) is believed by some to be the first full-blooded Native American to play baseball in the major leagues. He spent one celebrated season pitching for the Little Rock Travelers in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1920, which catapulted him to the peak of his short and tragic career. The Pittsburgh Pirates bought “Chief” Yellow Horse’s contract after that season, and he arrived in Pennsylvania in 1921 amid acclaim and high expectations, owing to a lightning fastball that had terrified and struck out so many batters in the Southern Association that Little Rock had won its first-ever baseball championship. In Little Rock, he made a lifetime friend of writer Dee Brown, …

Yellowhammer

Yellowhammer was a women’s communal-living farm in Madison County in the 1970s, representative of women’s land groups that existed in northwest Arkansas at that time. The back-to-the-land movement and the women’s movement came together in the early to mid-1970s to create the women’s land movement, self- or nearly self-sufficient land communities organized by and for women. The women’s land movement had many roots, including the hippie and anti-war movements, environmentalism, and feminism, many of which were interwoven. In 1970, founders Trella Laughlin and Patricia Jackson were in Austin, Texas, playing in an “all-girls band,” learning about solar energy, sharing resources and living spaces, and protesting the Vietnam War. Soon afterward, they moved with friends to land in rural Pope County, …

Yellville (Marion County)

The city of Yellville is the county seat of Marion County in northern Arkansas. Located on Crooked Creek, Yellville has never become a major metropolis, but a family duel in the nineteenth century and a turkey festival begun in the twentieth century have given the city some statewide and even national attention. Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood In 1817, the federal government declared parts of the White River and Arkansas River valleys in northern Arkansas a Cherokee reservation. The Cherokee invited other tribes to join them on their land, and the Shawnee of the Ohio River valley were one group who accepted the invitation. One of their settlements was on Crooked Creek, about twenty miles from the White River. An …

Yellville Expedition (November 25–29, 1862)

The five-day expedition to Yellville (Marion County) in late November 1862 was a successful Union raid to disrupt Confederate saltpeter mining operations and destroy a rebel arsenal. Arkansas’s Confederates mined saltpeter, an important ingredient in creating gunpowder, from limestone caves in the Ozark Mountains, and Union forces periodically attacked the mining facilities, resulting in such actions as the April 19, 1862, Skirmish at Talbot’s Ferry. After learning of saltpeter operations in Marion County in late November 1862, Brigadier General Francis J. Herron sent an expedition from southwestern Missouri to attack them. Colonel Dudley Wickersham of the Tenth Illinois Cavalry Regiment led his regiment, along with the First Iowa Cavalry and a battalion of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry, into Arkansas on …

Yocum (Carroll County)

Yocum (Carroll County), one of the county’s earliest settlements, was founded on a small stream near current State Highway 103 north of Green Forest (Carroll County). Little remains of the once prosperous unincorporated community other than a few homes. One of the earliest white settlers recorded in the area, Louis Russell from Illinois, established a homestead in 1822 along a small stream that today bears the name Yocum Creek. Some historians believe him to be the first to settle within the present boundaries of Carroll County. Soon, others arrived. In 1835, the creek and town’s namesake, John Yocum (sometimes spelled Yoachum), built a log grist mill and dam on the creek. His mill was soon processing up to four bushels …

Yocum Creek, Skirmish at

aka: Skirmish at Duncan Springs

  Part of the First Arkansas Cavalry (US) was stationed at Elkhorn Tavern, near Bentonville (Benton County), in late October 1862 to help control part of southwest Missouri until the army could enter Arkansas. On November 15, 1862, Company G under the command of Captain Rowman E. M. Mack and Company K under Captain Theodorick Youngblood, along with elements of an additional unidentified company, arrived in the area of Yocum Creek in Arkansas to evacuate loyal Union families to Elkhorn Tavern. While at the Jeremiah Youngblood farm, local Confederates attacked the Unionists and then withdrew to the south and west along Yocum Creek, with the Federals in pursuit. The fight continued southward, down the valley to Duncan Springs. At this junction, …

Yonley, Thomas D. W.

Thomas D. W. Yonley was born in what was then Virginia (later to become West Virginia), became a lawyer, migrated to Arkansas as the South began to secede from the Union, left the state to become a Federal soldier, and then returned to Little Rock (Pulaski County) for a ten-year political career that took him to high offices and a critical role in the turbulent era of Reconstruction. He was elected to the convention that wrote the Reconstruction constitution of 1864, and then was elected chancery judge in Little Rock, attorney general of Arkansas, and chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. As chief justice, he was the author of one of the pivotal decisions in Arkansas history. In the …

Yorktown (Lincoln County)

Yorktown is an unincorporated community in Lincoln County. Located on U.S. Highway 425 about six miles north of Star City (Lincoln County), the small community is also a landmark on the meandering course of Bayou Bartholomew. Although the land where Yorktown developed was claimed by the Quapaw at the time the Arkansas Territory was organized, it was sparsely populated. Even after Arkansas became a state, the region remained unclaimed for some time, in part because steamships rarely were able to navigate Bayou Bartholomew as far north as the Yorktown area (which at the time was part of Jefferson County). The settlement was named for the York family, who arrived shortly before the Civil War began; Joseph Lane Hunter, another settler, …

Young Memorial

The Young Memorial at Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County)—originally called the War Memorial Monument of Conway—is a sculptural monument erected to honor students of the school who died serving in the U.S. military during World War I. Six Hendrix students lost their lives in World War I. Five of these men died of diseases either in the United States or abroad; the sixth, Robert W. Young, died in combat. The idea for a war memorial on the Hendrix campus was conceived by the Hendrix Memorial Association, a student-run group, in 1919. With the help of faculty advisor Professor W. O. Wilson, the group soon raised $800 of the expected $1,200–$1,500 cost through student and alumni donations. By the spring …

Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)

aka: YWCA

From its beginnings in 1858, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) has been dedicated to bringing women together to consider, discuss, and ameliorate America’s racial, social, and economic ills. Fueled with, and informed by, the spirit of progressive reform, the YWCA’s largely Protestant, middle-class membership was further engaged in “Christian social work,” or community activism, which was directed particularly at women less fortunate than themselves. In Arkansas, the best known YWCA was located in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Founded in 1911, the Little Rock YWCA, which was located at 4th and Scott streets, was organized to assist women and girls in the community by providing them with access to education, recreational activities, employment, and lodging. Its original founders were Mery …

Young, Charles (Lynching of)

Charles Young, an African American man, was burned alive by a mob near Forrest City (St. Francis County) on October 20, 1902, accused of raping and killing a white woman. Ed Lewis, “a respected farmer,” was working at a fishing camp on the St. Francis River when his wife left their home on horseback about seven miles from Forrest City on October 13, 1902, to visit him. While on the way, according to newspaper accounts, someone attacked her, and she was “carried some thirty yards into the thicket…along the side of the road and there ravished and murdered.” When her riderless horse arrived at the camp, Lewis sent a messenger to go toward his house and investigate. When her horse …

Young, Joseph (Execution of)

On May 25, 1883, a young African American man named Joseph Young was executed in Little River County for an alleged assault on a white woman named Chism. No information is available on the Chism family, but in the 1880 federal census for Little River County, Joseph Young was living with his parents, farmer Alfred Young and his wife, Caroline, and his father was working as a ferryman. This census lists him as being fourteen, which would make his age seventeen at the time of his execution. The crime itself was described in a May 26, 1883, article in the Arkansas Gazette. In November 1882, a “comparatively poor” family named Chism arrived in Little River County with all their possessions. …

Young, Paul Holden

Paul Holden Young was a bamboo fly-rod designer known for making the bamboo fishing rod lighter, shorter, and capable of being broken down so that it could be more easily transported. Today, his rods are collectibles worth many times the prices they sold for in the 1930s and 1940s. Paul H. Young was born in Cherry Valley (Cross County) on August 27, 1890, to Charles Henry Young and Sarah Alice Young; he had four siblings. His father taught in a variety of local schools but was eventually forbidden from teaching in Cross County after arguments with each school board. Young’s mother, who had several sisters in Jonesboro (Craighead County), raised two of her five children and sent the rest to …

Young, Rufus King

Rufus King Young was an influential church and civil rights leader in Arkansas in the second half of the twentieth century. As the leader of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Little Rock (Pulaski County), he was actively involved in the local civil rights movement and the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Rufus King Young was born on May 13, 1911, to Robert Young and Laura Scott Young in Bayou Bartholomew (Drew County). He received his early education at Young’s Chapel AME Church, an institution built on land originally owned by his grandfather, before graduating in 1933 from Chicot County Training School in Dermott (Chicot County). He continued his education at Shorter College in North …