Entries - Starting with D

Duckett (Howard County)

Duckett, in the Ouachita Mountains in northern Howard County, was never a population center so much as a community defined by geography, relationships, a post office, and a school. The Cossatot River separates it from the rest of Howard County. With its post office and school long closed, the community in the twenty-first century comes together for Duckett Cemetery’s Decoration Day. Duckett coalesced into a community in the late 1800s. It was named for Allen Turner Duckett (1846–1907), who left Washburn (Sebastian County) with his family in 1876. The post office was created in 1887, around when Duckett first appeared on maps. Most people arrived in Duckett Township after the Civil War; only ten people bought federal land before the …

Duckett Ford (Howard County)

aka: Duckett Crossing (Howard County)

Duckett Ford (a.k.a. Duckett Crossing) was one of nearly a dozen places to cross, or ford, the Cossatot River in northern Howard County. According to a 1913 map, there were eleven fords in the twenty-plus-mile length of the river that separated Duckett Township from the rest of Howard County. Duckett Ford, however, had the advantage of being a straight shot between Wickes (Polk County)—and the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) that created it in 1897—and Galena (Howard County). Families who controlled low water crossings, such as Allen Turner Duckett’s family, could benefit financially. After the automobile and good roads came to the Ouachita Mountains, fords like this one became relics, and the Cossatot River became a whitewater tourist attraction. Little is …

Dudley Lake, Skirmish near

aka: Scout from Brownsville (December 15–18, 1864)

The December 16, 1964, Skirmish near Dudley Lake took place during a routine scouting expedition by men of the Third Michigan Cavalry Regiment from the Union base at Brownsville (Lonoke County). Seventy-five men of Companies E, F, and G, Third Michigan Cavalry, under Captain James G. Butler of Company F, rode out of Brownsville on December 15, 1864, on a scout into what is now Lonoke County. After crossing Bayou Meto at Eagle’s Ford, they camped at Smith’s Mill, having traveled sixteen miles. The next morning, Butler dispersed his men along three different roads heading south. The troops converged before reaching Flyn’s farm near Dudley Lake, south of present-day Coy (Lonoke County). There, they ran into a small party of …

Dudley, Robert Hamilton (Bob)

Robert Hamilton Dudley—who followed a lineage of lawyers, politicians, and judges—was a longtime trial judge and justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He retired in 1996. Robert H. (Bob) Dudley was born on November 18, 1933, in Jonesboro (Craighead County), the son of Denver Layton Dudley, who was a lawyer, and Helen Paslay Dudley, a schoolteacher and clinical psychologist. An older brother died as an infant. Dudley’s family had a long history in Arkansas. After fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War, Dudley’s great-grandfather left Kentucky and settled in northeastern Arkansas at Piggott (Clay County). Dudley’s grandfather, Robert H. Dudley, was elected treasurer of Clay County in 1900, to the Arkansas House of Representatives for a single term in …

Dueling

Dueling was a popular means of settling disputes among the well-bred, higher-class population on the Arkansas frontier, and though it was considered part of the code of honor for a Southern gentleman, its popularity added to Arkansas’s reputation for violence that remained until well after the Civil War. An insult, real or imagined, likely would bring a challenge from the injured party. Duels traditionally took place at dawn to avoid interruptions, and the two parties usually met somewhere just outside the territory to get around the laws against dueling that were passed as early as the 1820s. Friends would accompany the combatants, acting as “seconds,” to see that things were carried out fairly. Seconds had to be of equal social …

Duffie (Hot Spring County)

Duffie is an unincorporated community in Hot Spring County, located about one and a half miles northeast of the entrance to DeGray Lake Resort State Park and about four miles southwest of Bismarck (Hot Spring County). The community is about nineteen miles southwest of the county seat of Malvern (Hot Spring County). Early settlers in the area included Zacheriah Prince, who obtained a federal land patent for 160 acres in 1856, with an additional 160 acres in 1860. Born in North Carolina, Prince appeared in the 1860 federal census with his wife, Suseanah, and their four sons and two daughters. The family lived in Alabama before moving to Arkansas. Zacheriah Prince owned about $3,000 of real estate and $800 of …

Dugan, William (Lynching of)

A white man named William Dugan was lynched in St. Charles (Arkansas County) on October 17, 1875, shortly after the Arkansas Supreme Court granted him a new trial for a murder he had allegedly perpetrated the previous year. In the fall of 1874, William Dugan was arrested on a charge of having murdered Ahib Inman near St. Charles. There is a William Dugan recorded as residing in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on the 1870 census, where he is listed as twenty-two years old, a native of Ireland, and working as a store clerk. According to an October 21, 1875, article in the Arkansas Gazette, the two men had apparently quarreled a few months previously, and “Inman had eloped with and …

Duggar Family

aka: 19 and Counting [Television Show]
aka: Counting On [Television Show]

The Duggars are an Arkansas family who became famous on the TLC network show 19 Kids and Counting. The family is known for its strict adherence to the Baptist faith and conservative values, which include restrictions against any birth control methods. However, the Duggars have been criticized by those who believe that such large families are not healthy for children and those who oppose their anti-contraceptive activism. On May 22, 2015, TLC announced that they were pulling all episodes of 19 Kids and Counting after Josh Duggar, the eldest child of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, admitted publicly that he had engaged in acts of child molestation as a teenager; the show was officially canceled later that year. However, certain …

Duke, Charles Sumner

A trailblazing African-American architect and engineer, Charles Sumner Duke not only designed unique public structures, but he also fought for housing rights and educational opportunities for African Americans. His powerful legacy continues in the buildings he designed, as well as in the organization he formed to facilitate the development of engineering and technological skills in youth of color. Charles Sumner Duke was born in Selma, Alabama, on July 21, 1879. His father, Jesse Duke, was the editorial writer and publisher for a local newspaper, The Herald. His mother, Willie Black Duke, was from a family of established businessmen. It was a financially secure family, allowing Duke and his siblings to take advantage of opportunities that many others in the black …

Dumas (Desha County)

Dumas of Desha County is in the Arkansas Delta, west of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. Dumas has long been a business and agricultural asset to the state of Arkansas and is a welcome oasis to travelers through the delta region. Reconstruction through Early Twentieth Century In 1870, William B. Dumas, a planter, merchant, and railroad surveyor of French descent, migrated to the area and bought acres of farmland from the Abercrombie Holmes family, which had bought it from the state. The settlement eventually was named for this early planter. The town continued to develop, primarily as a result of the extension of the Missouri Pacific Valley Line Railroad, which not only made possible an influx of settlers from other …

Dumas (Lynching of)

On August 5, 1874, an African-American man, identified only as Dumas in newspaper reports, was killed in Greenwood (Sebastian County). His killing was in response to his alleged “murderous assault” on Jacob Greiner and then his escape from jail after his arrest. According to the Weekly New Era of Fort Smith (Sebastian County), several weeks earlier Dumas had allegedly assaulted Greiner in an effort to rob his store. He was arrested and housed in a “stout log-house or pen” with a murderer named Walls or Wall. According to the Era, the prisoners were accessed by a stairway or ladder that ran through a hole with an iron door; it was by this means that food was delivered. On August 12, 1874, …

Dumas Race Riot of 1920

In January 1920, federal troops were called out to quell a feared “race war” near Dumas (Desha County). The incident is indicative of the tensions in the area at the time. World War I had deepened racial animosity in Arkansas and across the nation. African American soldiers who had served their country in segregated units hoped they would increasingly be treated and paid as equals. The area around Dumas was heavily African American, and the area around the settlement where the incident occurred was estimated to be predominately Black at a ratio of 30–1. Many white residents of such areas saw such large Black populations as a threat. Farm organizations were increasingly attempting to organize Black farm laborers, increasing whites’ …

Dumas, Ernest Clifton (Ernie)

Ernie Dumas was the dean of the Arkansas political press corps for most of the second half of the twentieth century. His days as a journalist extended back to high school, when he worked for the El Dorado Daily News, and he was later an associate editor and a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and a columnist for the Arkansas Times.  Ernest Clifton Dumas was born on December 13, 1937, in El Dorado (Union County), the younger of two sons born to Joseph Clifton Dumas and Berta Canady Dumas. His mother was an educator who stopped teaching when she got married, but she taught Dumas to read before he started school and later taught his son as well. Dumas grew up in El Dorado and graduated from El Dorado High School in 1955.  At the start of his …

Dumas, Henry

Henry Dumas was a critically acclaimed author of poetry and fiction who captured, in some of his finest work, many of his childhood experiences as an African American living in southern Arkansas. Henry Dumas was born on July 20, 1934, in Sweet Home (Pulaski County), sometimes called Sweetwater, and he continued to live there until he moved with his family to Harlem when he was ten years old. Almost no information about Dumas’s childhood is available, yet his life in the deep South and the desolate conditions confronting black Southerners in that era are insightfully depicted in several of his writings, including his widely admired short story, “Goodbye, Sweetwater.” Dumas graduated from Harlem’s Commerce High School in 1953 and then …

DuMond, Wayne Eugene

aka: Wayne Dumond Affair

Wayne Eugene DuMond was a serial rapist and killer whose crimes and efforts to gain his freedom from prison vexed the political careers of three Arkansas governors: Bill Clinton, Jim Guy Tucker, and Mike Huckabee. Suspecting that DuMond might have been framed for the rape of a Forrest City (St. Francis County) woman because DuMond’s accuser was a distant cousin of Clinton, who was by then president of the United States, Governor Huckabee arranged his parole to Missouri in 1999. DuMond was convicted soon thereafter of the rape and murder of a Missouri woman and was suspected of raping and killing another woman. When Huckabee ran for president in 2007–08, DuMond’s parole and subsequent crimes became a major detriment because …

Dunaway, Edwin Eagle

Edwin Eagle Dunaway was a lawyer and politician who was a rare unabashed champion of racial equality in the days of total segregation in Arkansas, before and after the historic desegregation crisis at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1957–1959. He served in the Arkansas General Assembly for three terms before and during World War II, was elected prosecuting attorney twice, served more than a year as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, and taught law at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County). He established important civil-liberties laws by taking unconstitutionally coercive acts passed by the Arkansas legislature to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they were nullified. Edwin Dunaway was born …

Dunaway, Hollie “Hot Stuff”

Hollie “Hot Stuff” Dunaway is a model, wrestler, and former professional boxer. From 2003 to 2013, fighting at the minimum weight (98–115 pounds) and flyweight levels, the diminutive Dunaway (her height is generally listed at about five feet) crafted a successful career in the developing world of women’s boxing, winning numerous flyweight and minimum weight world titles. Hollie Natashia Dunaway was born on October 18, 1984, in Van Buren (Crawford County). Little about her family or her youth is known. She first became attracted to boxing while watching female boxers training at the World Class Fitness Center in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Even though she had never seen a professional boxing match, she decided that she wanted to pursue a …

Dunaway, Louis Sharpe

Sharpe Dunaway may be the most famous traveling salesman in Arkansas history, a distinction only partly due to his sidelines—politics, writing, and state promotion. For nearly fifty years, Dunaway was a sales agent for newspapers, mainly the Arkansas Gazette, which earned him the sobriquet “Mr. Gazette.” He was a friend and supporter of many Arkansas politicians, notably Governor and U.S. Senator Jeff Davis and U.S. Senator Hattie Caraway. Dunaway wrote two books, one about the life and speeches of Jeff Davis, and the other a collection of observations about Arkansas and its people titled, What a Preacher Saw Through a Key-Hole in Arkansas. The short book, published in 1925, would become an important contribution to Arkansas history for a chapter …

Dunaway, Michael Lee (Mike)

Mike Dunaway suffered a permanent injury to his back playing football for the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) in Conway (Faulkner County), so he took up the game of golf and became an international legend for consistently driving a golf ball farther off the tee than anyone in the world. He parlayed that skill into a career, creating celebrity tournaments and founding golf’s 350 Club, as well as the Long Drivers Association of America. His publicity stunts, popular instructional videos, celebrity events, and camaraderie with a few of professional golf’s legends made him famous, although he never perfected the rest of his golf game to become a tournament golfer. Michael Lee Dunaway was born in Conway on February 1, 1955, …

Duncan, Virginia Maud Dunlap

Virginia Maud Dunlap Duncan was the second woman in Arkansas to secure a registration as a pharmacist. As a young businesswoman and editor of a newspaper, she ran for mayor of Winslow (Washington County) with an all-woman slate for city council. This “petticoat government” was elected to two consecutive terms and gained national attention during its time in office. Maud Dunlap was born on October 22, 1873, in Fayetteville (Washington County) to Dudley Clinton and Catherine Hewitt Dunlap. Her mother died when Dunlap was an infant. She and her brother, Rufus, went to live with her uncle Albert Dunlap and his wife, Virginia, in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Other foster parents raised Dunlap’s sister and other two brothers. Dunlap’s foster …

Dunn, Charles DeWitt

Charles DeWitt Dunn served as the president of Henderson State University from 1986 until 2008, making him the longest-serving president in the institution’s history. Charles Dunn was born on December 2, 1945, to Charles E. Dunn and Lucille Dunn in Magnolia (Columbia County). The Dunn family operated a restaurant in McNeil (Columbia County), where Charles graduated from high school in 1963. Attending Southern State College (now Southern Arkansas University), Dunn earned an undergraduate degree in political science in 1967. He earned a graduate degree in government at the University of North Texas in 1970 and a doctoral degree in political science at Southern Illinois University in 1973. Dunn married Donna Jane Parsons in 1966, and the couple had two daughters …

Dunn, Poindexter

Poindexter Dunn was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the First District of Arkansas in the Forty-Sixth through the Fiftieth Congresses, serving from 1879 to 1889. Poindexter Dunn was born on November 3, 1834, near Raleigh, North Carolina, to Grey Dunn and Lydia Baucum Dunn. He and his family moved to Limestone County, Alabama, in 1837. After receiving his early education in local common schools, he graduated from Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1854. He studied law for a time before moving to St. Francis County in Arkansas in 1856 and then won election to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1858. He also grew cotton until 1861, when the Civil War broke out. …

Dunn, Ronnie Gene

With a slew of chart-topping singles to his credit as half of the duo Brooks & Dunn, Ronnie Gene Dunn established himself as a member of the most award-winning duo in country music. Though Arkansas is not considered his home state, he has earned a spot in its musical history. Ronnie Dunn was born on June 1, 1953, in Coleman, Texas, to Jesse Eugene Dunn and Gladys Inez Thurmon Dunn. His father was a musician who also worked in the oil fields and drove trucks; his mother was a devout Baptist who, in the 1960s, lived in El Dorado (Union County) and worked as a bookkeeper at the First National Bank and then as a telephone operator at Warner Brown …

Dunnington (Independence County)

The historic community of Dunnington of Independence County was located on Highway 14, about two miles east-southeast of Oil Trough (Independence County). It was about five miles south across the White River bridge from Newark (Independence County) and approximately eight and a half miles from Newport (Jackson County). Being close to the White River, floods were common, at times even devastating. Dunnington was in a two-mile radius of Hulsey Bend (Independence County), Elmo (Independence County), Macks (Jackson County), Meadow Lake (Independence County), and Oil Trough. As early as 1800, French frontiersmen were in the White River bottoms hunting bears and smaller game animals, including deer. Traffic in bear oil was lucrative and proved to be an incentive for settlement, and …

Dunnington, John William

John William Dunnington was a Confederate naval and infantry officer during the Civil War. After serving in the U.S. Navy early in his career, he joined the Confederate navy. He served for approximately nine months in Arkansas and took part in the Engagement at St. Charles and Battle of Arkansas Post. Dunnington was rare in that he held the rank of officer in both the Confederate army and navy during the war and served both east and west of the Mississippi River. John W. Dunnington was born on May 18, 1833, in Christian County, Kentucky, to Francis Dunnington (1798–1835) and Elizabeth Cobey Dunnington (1799–1848), both of whom were natives of Maryland. Dunnington’s brother, Francis C. Dunnington, served on Nathan Bedford …

Dupree, Amos “General” (Execution of)

Amos Dupree, an African American man nicknamed “General,” was hanged at DeValls Bluff (Prairie County) on November 15, 1895, for the shotgun slaying of a romantic rival. Amos Dupree, described in the Arkansas Gazette as “a repulsive looking negro, as black as the sable hues of midnight,” lived in Monroe County, where he was “enamored” of Pennie Bonner, “a dusky damsel of engaging quality.” However, Ed (sometimes referred to as Robert) Harris, “a dude…arrayed in store clothes,” also pursued Bonner and “being possessed of an oily tongue soon succeeded in alienating the affections of Pennie Bonner from Dupree.” On June 15, 1894, Dupree snuck up on Harris as he was plowing a field and “without warning, proceeded to perforate Harris …

Dusenbury, Emma Hays

Emma Hays Dusenbury was an outstanding traditional singer; her work is represented by some 116 songs in the nation’s leading folksong archive at the Library of Congress. Emma Hays was born on January 9, 1862, probably in Habersham County or Rabun County, Georgia, to William Jasper Hays and Mary Jane Pitts. She came to Arkansas with her parents and four siblings in 1872, staying first in Crittenden County but eventually settling in Baxter County, near Gassville. Sometime after 1880, she married Ernest Dusenbury, who was from Illinois. Two years later, they had a daughter. In about 1894 or 1895, she suffered a serious illness that left her blind. Before settling near Mena (Polk County) in about 1907, Dusenbury lived an itinerant life; …

DuVal, Elias Rector

In the late nineteenth century, physician Elias Rector DuVal (sometimes rendered Duval) was a leader in the drive to modernize medicine in Arkansas. In the 1870s, he cofounded the Arkansas State Medical Association (ASMA) and the Arkansas Medical Society (AMS). E. R. DuVal was born on August 13, 1836, in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) to William DuVal, who was a trader, and his wife, Harriet Tabitha Doddridge DuVal. The family included three sisters and two brothers. In 1835, DuVal’s sister Catherine DuVal married Elias Rector. Rector was a U.S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas and Indian Territory and later served as superintendent of Indian Affairs. Educated in the local schools, DuVal graduated from Arkansas College in Fayetteville (Washington …

Duvall, Leland Blaine

Leland Blaine Duvall was a writer and editor who wrote columns, editorials, and historical articles for the Arkansas Gazette for forty years after World War II. Self-educated and reared on a hardscrabble Ozark Mountain farm, Duvall was an itinerant farm laborer until World War II. His voluminous correspondence from training camps and the war front with family members, friends, and his future wife impelled him to college and a writing career. His commentary on agriculture and economics for the Arkansas Gazette attracted a wide following and won numerous awards. Leland Duvall was born on June 19, 1911, the eldest of four sons of Omer Duvall and Esther Singleton Duvall. His father was a sharecropper, but he acquired forty acres in …

Duwali

aka: Bowl
aka: Bowles

Duwali, also known as The Bowl or Bowles due to the Quapaw meaning of his name, was leader of a group of Cherokee who lived briefly in Arkansas early in the territorial period, from about 1812 to 1818. His life story illustrates the fate of thousands of Native Americans from tribes and nations east of the Mississippi River who moved west to get away from economic and political turmoil long before the official Indian Removal events of the 1830s. These early groups had a significant impact on early territorial residents and on the Caddo, the Osage, and the Quapaw who lived, hunted, and claimed territorial rights in Arkansas when Euro-American settlers first arrived. Duwali was born about 1756 in the …

Dwight Mission

Dwight Mission near Russellville (Pope County) was the first formal Protestant effort directed at the education and conversion of Native Americans in Arkansas and was one of the first Protestant missions established west of the Mississippi. The mission was established in 1820 and operated in Arkansas until 1829. The mission had been requested by Western Cherokee Principal Chief Tahlonteskee in 1818, when he visited Brainerd Mission in Georgia, sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a Presbyterian organization. The Western Cherokee was a diverse group whose previous generation had migrated into Arkansas while fleeing troubles in the Cherokee homeland at the southern end of the Appalachians, and some of the members thought it useful for their …

Dye, “Aunt Caroline”

aka: Caroline Tracy Dye

Caroline Tracy Dye, better known as “Aunt Caroline,” was a highly respected seer whose name was recognized in Arkansas and the Mid-South in the early years of the twentieth century. The fact that she was an uneducated African American made her popularity at the time all the more unusual. Caroline Tracy’s parents’ names are unknown, and there has been an abundance of conflicting information through the years about her date of birth and early life. A 1918 obituary described her as being eighteen years of age at the start of the Civil War, which would put her birth year around 1843; however, the 1880 federal census records her age as twenty-seven, which would put her birth year at 1853. Her …

Dyer (Crawford County)

Dyer is a second-class city in Crawford County. It lies on Highway 64 west of Mulberry (Crawford County) and east of Alma (Crawford County); Interstate 40 crosses over the northern end of Dyer. Dyer is most known for being the headquarters for Tony and Susan Alamo, whose religious foundation owned several buildings and businesses in the city beginning in 1975. Highway 64 follows the path of the East-West Military Road, which was authorized by Congress in 1825 and largely completed by 1828, linking Little Rock (Pulaski County) with Fort Gibson in what is now Oklahoma. In the 1840s, Joel Dyer acquired a farm adjacent to the road and began offering water and a rest stop to the west-bound wagon trains …

Dyer, Donald Gene

Basketball coach Don Dyer, with 601 collegiate victories to his name, became the winningest college coach in Arkansas history. All of the wins came while he was the head coach at Henderson State University (HSU) and the University of Central Arkansas (UCA). He is the winningest coach in the history of both institutions. As a result of his success, Dyer was inducted into a number of athletic halls of fame. Donald Gene Dyer was born in Monroe County, Arkansas, on October 18, 1933, to farmer Edward Thomas Dyer and Julia Stinnett Dyer. He was one of the couple’s four sons. His father died when he was one year old. Dyer grew up in Clarendon (Monroe County). After graduating from high …

Dyess (Mississippi County)

aka: Dyess Colony Resettlement Area

One of the most famous “resettlement colonies” for impoverished farmers during the Great Depression was in Dyess (Mississippi County). The Dyess Colony became one of the most well known because one of its early residents was singer Johnny Cash. National attention focused on Arkansas when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited the community in 1936. Although smaller now and no longer a government project, Dyess still attracts tourists to northeast Arkansas. While the Roaring Twenties had a euphoric effect on much of the nation, the agricultural economy of Arkansas did not share in the prosperity. By the end of the 1920s, one disaster after another devastated the small independent farmers of the state. The Flood of 1927 was followed by drought. …

Dyess, William Reynolds

William Reynolds Dyess was a politician and government official who headed the Arkansas operations for two New Deal agencies: the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The cooperative farming community known as Dyess (Mississippi County) was named in his honor following his death in a plane crash. William Reynolds Dyess was born in July 1894—the exact date is unknown—near Waynesville, Mississippi, to William Henry Dyess and Martina (Mattie) Eudora Bass Dyess. He had a brother and a sister. He initially worked as both a contractor and a farmer in Mississippi before moving to Arkansas in 1926 to take a job as the superintendent of construction for a company doing levee work on the Mississippi and …