Charles Solomon Stifft (1856–1926)

Charles Solomon Stifft was a prominent Little Rock (Pulaski County) businessman and civic leader during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is the namesake for Little Rock’s Stifft Station Historic District, originally known as Stifft (or Stifft’s) Addition, a predominantly residential neighborhood that he was instrumental in developing on a streetcar line just west of the Arkansas State Capitol and contiguous with the Capitol View Neighborhood Historic District. He also was involved in the development of what would eventually become Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro (Pike County).

Charles Stifft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 18, 1856. He was the eldest child of Michael Stifft and Bertha Lowendorf Stifft, both of whom had immigrated to the United States from Europe during the mid-1840s and early 1850s, respectively. His father, a Mexican War veteran, was employed as a jewelry engraver in Natchez, Mississippi, by 1850, before the couple’s marriage in 1855, at which time he appears to have moved to Ohio. Shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, when Stifft was three or four years old, the family returned to the South, settling in New Orleans, Louisiana, where they resided for many years, rearing Stifft and his siblings. His mother died there in 1869. Sometime in the 1870s, his father relocated to Little Rock, where he founded the jewelry engraving business that became the Charles S. Stifft Company when his son joined the business in 1879.

While maintaining and growing the business’s core concerns of manufacturing and selling jewelry and watches, Stifft expanded the enterprise to encompass real estate development and other commercial ventures. He was active in the community as a member and officer of several civic organizations. He co-founded and served a four-year term as president of the Little Rock Board of Trade (later the Chamber of Commerce). He also served in leadership roles as a member of Little Rock’s Congregation B’nai Israel.

In 1906, Pike County farmer John W. Huddleston discovered on his property what turned out to be diamonds. The gems were sent to Stifft for authentication. After his initial appraisal, Stifft shipped the stones to jewelers in St. Louis and New York City, where further appraisals determined conclusively that they were in fact diamonds of an exceptional quality. He also persuaded scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey to visit and inspect the location.

Within a few weeks of the discovery, Stifft and business partners formed the Arkansas Diamond Company and purchased Huddleston’s farm with ambitions to develop and profit from mining what was then believed to be the only diamond field in North America. Their endeavors and successive ventures failed to achieve expected results, and the property was operated as a privately owned tourist attraction for several decades before the State of Arkansas acquired it and created Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Stifft was twice married. He married Rebecca (Beckie) Mailhouse of Brooklyn, New York, on July 25, 1877, in Chicago, Illinois, where Stifft was working as a jewelry salesman. The couple had six children. She died unexpectedly at the age of sixty-three in Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 18, 1919, while the couple was on an extended tour of the western United States. In 1921, Stifft married the widowed Melanie Sophia Leon (Sophie) Cohen.

Stifft suffered a fatal heart attack on August 26, 1926, during a vacation in the Belgrade Lakes region of Maine. His remains were returned to Little Rock and interred at the Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park in a gravesite next to his first wife and near other family members.

For additional information:
Carolyn LeMaster Arkansas Jewish History Collection. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System, Little Rock, Arkansas. Finding aid online at https://arstudies.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/findingaids/search/searchterm/BC.MSS.08.07 (accessed October 9, 2025).

LeMaster, Carolyn Gray. A Corner of the Tapestry: A History of the Jewish Experience in Arkansas, 1820s–1990s. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994.

Rice, Joe David. Arkansas Backstories: Quirks, Characters, and Curiosities of the Natural State. Vol. 1. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2018.

Greg A. Phelps
Columbia, Kentucky