Alfred W. Arrington (1810–1867)

The colorful and often controversial Alfred W. Arrington was an attorney, minister, and Arkansas state legislator, as well as an author and poet. Often writing under the pen name of Charles Summerfield, he is best known for his 1847 book The Desperadoes of the South-West: Containing an Account of the Cane-Hill Murders, Together with the Lives of Several of the Most Notorious Regulators and Moderators of that Region. In addition to his time in Arkansas, he lived in Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

Alfred Washington Arrington was born on September 17, 1810, in Iredell, North Carolina. While there is some question as to who his parents were, they are generally listed as Sophia Moore Arrington and John Arrington, a Methodist minister. At age nine, Arrington moved with his father to Arkansas.

By 1828, when Arrington was eighteen, he was becoming well-known as a traveling Methodist preacher, delivering sermons at camp meetings in Arkansas, Missouri, and Indiana. Arrington was ordained to the clergy in 1831. He was widely praised for his “exhortations” and in demand at the pulpit. However, when he was in his mid-twenties, Arrington surprised his followers by renouncing the ministry as well as all religion. Later in life, he again claimed to be a Methodist minister; a family history states that he converted to the Catholic faith shortly before his death.

In 1833, he and Sarah “Sallie” Conner were married in Arkansas. They were the parents of four children: Mary, John, Alfred Jr., and Annette (Ann) Elizabeth. In 1847, Arrington married another woman in New York, Lydia Leora Abigail Holden, daughter of a banking family, having apparently divorced his first wife. There were four children from their marriage: Flora, Alfred Jr., Genevieve, and Adrian. The 1850 census showed his first wife Sarah and her children living at the home of her father in Washington County. Later census data shows Sarah living with her daughter Ann from 1880 to 1900, also in Washington County.

Around 1834, Arrington took up the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1838, spending the next several decades practicing as an attorney in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Texas.

According to Ted Worley, writing in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Arrington was on the scene following the murders at Cane Hill (Washington County) that took place in 1839. Worley states that Arrington promised to write about the condemned men after talking with them and believing in their innocence. Later reports indicated that at least one of the four accused men had been whipped and beaten into a confession before they were all lynched by vigilantes without a trial. Arrington subsequently witnessed their hanging and wrote about the incident in his most famous book, The Desperadoes of the South-West. Reflecting the sensationalism common to that era, Arrington expressed the view that the men who were hanged for the Cane Hill killings had been innocent.

Also in the year 1839, Arrington raised a mob of about one hundred citizens in Fayetteville (Washington County) to protest a court’s decision in another case, gaining possession of the courthouse. After Arrington’s faction commandeered a cannon that was the property of Arkansas, the crowd gradually dispersed despite his efforts to rally them.

Arrington held a prominent role in a noted 1843 trial at the Benton County Circuit Court when Cherokee leader Stand Watie was accused of murder. According to Worley, Arrington served as Watie’s defense attorney, and as a result of Arrington’s courtroom tactics, Watie was acquitted.

After a contentious campaign in 1842, Arrington was elected to the Arkansas General Assembly. He was also appointed as a trustee for the Far West Seminary in the 1844–45 term. Other prominent board members for the Far West Seminary included Isaac Murphy, David Walker, and the Reverend Cephas Washburn. The Far West Seminary ultimately failed due to political and religious factionalism as well as economic hard times.

In 1850, Arrington was elected a district judge in Texas but retired because of ill health. He then went to New York, where he published a book in 1857 titled The Rangers and Regulators of the Tanaha, or Life Among the Lawless: A Tale of the Republic of Texas. Moving to Chicago, Illinois, in 1857, Arrington built a successful law practice there. Worley states that in the Civil War era, Arrington was in sympathy with the South. Just after the war, when emotions were running high, Arrington delivered a poem that he wrote, “An Elegy to John Wilkes Booth,” lauding the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. Choosing the Union Officers’ Club in Chicago as his performance space, Arrington praised Booth for striking down Lincoln, whom he called a tyrant. According to Worley, Arrington was almost mobbed.

In his spare time amid a colorful, controversial life, Arrington enjoyed writing poetry of various lengths and topics. A posthumous collection was published in 1869 as Poems of Alfred W. Arrington. Many of the poems touch on the transient nature of existence, with such titles as “Life and Death,” and “The Problem of Life.”

After receiving the last rites of the Catholic Church, Arrington died in Chicago on December 31, 1867.

For additional information:
“Alfred W. Arrington.” All Poetry. https://allpoetry.com/Alfred-W-Arrington (accessed June 18, 2025).

“Alfred W. Arrington (1810–1867)—North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Illinois.” Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry. https://lawlit.net/lp-2001/arrington.html (accessed June 18, 2025).

Arrington, Alfred W. The Desperadoes of the South-West: Containing an Account of the Cane-Hill Murders, Together with the Lives of Several of the Most Notorious Regulators and Moderators of that Region. New York: W. H. Graham, 1847. Online at https://archive.org/details/GR_95 (accessed June 18, 2025).

Giles, Marie. “Arrington, Alfred W. (1810–1867).” Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/arrington-alfred-w (accessed June 18, 2025).

Worley, Ted R. “The Story of Alfred W. Arrington.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 14 (Winter 1955): 315–339.

Nancy Hendricks
Garland County Historical Society