Entries - Entry Category: State Figures

Wallace Townsend was both a prominent lawyer and a prominent leader in the Arkansas Republican Party. Townsend was a leading member of the “lily-white” faction that helped alienate African Americans from the Grand Old Party (GOP). Wallace Townsend was born on August 20, 1882, in DeWitt, Iowa, the son of John R. Townsend and Italia James; he had a brother named A. E. “Jack” Townsend, who was the assistant postmaster in Little Rock (Pulaski County) for several decades. Townsend moved to Little Rock with his family in November 1894 and received his BA from Hendrix College in 1902, after which he entered the field of public education. His most noteworthy service as an educator was his tenure as principal of …

Representative Paul Van Dalsem—with his cigars, his aggressive style, and his fiscal conservatism—came to represent the classic southern politician. He was a master of the legislative process and parliamentary procedure. This mastery served him well, allowing him to serve on and off for thirty years in the Arkansas House of Representatives. Paul Van Dalsem was born in Aplin (Perry County) in 1907 to Pyke Van Dalsem and May Thompson Van Dalsem. He had one sister. He attended public school in Perryville (Perry County) and began college at what is now Arkansas Tech University before transferring to Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, where he earned his degree. He later attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), earning a …

David Walker, a lawyer, a jurist, and an early settler of Fayetteville (Washington County), was the leading Whig in the state’s “great northwest” region for nearly fifty years. He began his career as a member of the convention that wrote the state’s first constitution in 1836. He chaired the 1861 convention, and remained active in politics and law until shortly before his death. David Walker was born on February 19, 1806, near Elkton, Kentucky, to Jacob Wythe Walker and Nancy Hawkins Walker. The Walkers were a prolific and politically prominent family in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Virginia. In 1808, his father moved to Logan County, Kentucky, where in 1811 Walker first attended school. In two years, he memorized the grammatical rules …

Andrew Jackson (A. J.) Walls was a Lonoke County pioneer, planter, and elected public official in the early days of the county. He was a state representative, chairman of the State Democratic Committee, and father and grandfather of many prominent Lonoke County lawyers and politicians. A. J. Walls was born on April 2, 1862, in the Pleasant Hills community in northern Lonoke County (about ten miles north of Lonoke, the county seat). He was the son of Jackson Walls, a native of North Carolina, and Catherine Dickerson Cook, who was a native of Tennessee. Tax records reveal that the elder Jackson owned real estate in Pleasant Hills in 1852. He married Catherine Dickerson Cook, his second wife, in 1860. Walls …

Stephen Wheeler was a veteran of the Civil War, a longtime court clerk for the Western District of Arkansas, an auditor for the State of Arkansas, a state senator, and the publisher of a journal. Stephen Wheeler was born on February 28, 1839, in Steuben County, New York. His mother, Millicent Clark Wheeler, died when he was nine years old, at which time his father, farmer Daniel Wheeler, moved to Wisconsin. Stephen Wheeler began a three-year apprenticeship with a druggist when he was sixteen. He later moved back to New York and became a salesman at a dry goods wholesale warehouse. He later moved to Michigan, and in 1861, he volunteered in the Union army and enlisted at Battle Creek, …