Entries - Entry Type: Person

Thomas, William

William H. Thomas, a native of Wynne (Cross County), was an American soldier in World War II who was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry in battle against the Japanese in the Philippines. William H. Thomas was born in Wynne on January 13, 1923, to lumber mill worker John Thomas and Jessie Thomas. The Thomas family, which included two daughters and four other sons, apparently moved around the Arkansas Delta, as the family lived in Trumann (Poinsett County) in 1930 and in Brinkley (Monroe County) by the mid-1940s. William Thomas, who had worked as a farmer and timber worker, attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1943 but was turned away because of a heart condition. He succeeded …

Thomason, Harry Z.

Harry Z. Thomason is a film and television producer best known for the television series Designing Women and for his friendship with Bill Clinton. Thomason made the casting of people of Southern heritage more popular, replacing the ignorant hillbilly type with a more wry, witty, sophisticated Southerner. Thomason was born in 1940 in Hampton (Calhoun County). After moving to Little Rock (Pulaski County), he became a high-school speech teacher and football coach. Beginning with Encounter with the Unknown (1973), he wrote, produced, and/or directed the movies The Great Lester Boggs (1974), So Sad about Gloria (1975), The Day It Came to Earth (1979), and Revenge of Bigfoot (1979). He then moved to television, where he produced the television movies A Shining …

Thompson, Charles Louis

Charles Louis Thompson was a highly prolific architect who created one of the most successful architectural practices in Arkansas during the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. His firm designed more than two thousand buildings, of which hundreds still exist today. Charles Thompson was born in November 1868 in Danville, Illinois, to James C. and Henrietta Lightner Thompson. He and his six siblings were orphaned when he was fourteen, and they moved to Indiana to live with relatives. He quit school at the age of fourteen and went to work in a mill to help support his brothers and sisters. During his extra hours, he worked for an architect named Hunt, who taught him drafting and exposed …

Thompson, David Aiken

David Aiken Thompson came to Arkansas as the Arkansas Territory was beginning to show rapid growth, attracting settlers from eastern states and offering opportunities for business and land speculation. Thompson became one of the largest land speculators in Arkansas. At the height of his operations, he reportedly either owned outright or had an interest in 150,000 acres of land in sixteen Arkansas counties. David Thompson was born on April 4, 1796, at New Castle, Delaware, to Dr. David Thompson and his second wife, Frances Aiken Thompson. His father died two months before he was born. His mother soon moved to Jonesboro, Tennessee. There, she met John McAlister, and they married on December 25, 1800. Thompson grew up in Jonesboro and …

Thompson, Green Walter

Green Walter Thompson was a major African-American political leader and businessman in Little Rock (Pulaski County) from the end of the Civil War until his death. Green Thompson was born Green Elliott, a slave on the Robert Elliottt farm in Ouachita County. Nothing is known of his early life, though his tombstone lists a birth date of August 15, 1847. A birth year of 1848 is estimated from documents accumulated later in his life. The 1880 census records him as a “mulatto,” so it is likely a white man fathered him. His mother eventually married a slave named Thompson, and Green Elliott took his stepfather’s name. While a teenager, he married a slave named Dora Hildreth; they soon had a …

Thompson, M. Jeff

Meriwether “Jeff” Thompson was a brigadier general in the Missouri State Guard who served and led troops in Arkansas during the Civil War, ultimately surrendering the troops in the northeastern part of the state in 1865 after earning a reputation as a wily commander. Meriwether Thompson was born on January 22, 1826, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, the son of U.S. Army paymaster Captain Meriwether Thompson and Nancy Slaughter Broadus Thompson. As a youth, Thompson would skip school to accompany a black deliveryman named Jeff on his rounds, which led his family to begin calling him by that name. His friends soon followed suit, and after moving to Missouri in 1847 he had his name legally changed to M. Jeff Thompson. …

Thompson, Roosevelt Levander

Roosevelt Levander Thompson was a very accomplished Arkansan who achieved many things during his short lifetime and is recognized as one of the most gifted people to have attended Yale University. Roosevelt Thompson was born on January 28, 1962, in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to the Reverend C. R. Thompson and Dorothy L. Thompson. He attended Little Rock Central High School and participated in many of Central’s activities. During his freshman year, he decided he wanted to pursue a career in public service. By his junior year, his teachers were already talking to him about becoming a Rhodes Scholar. He was involved in school plays, the school newspaper, and various academic groups, and he was named the All-Star player on …

Thornton, Billy Bob

Billy Bob Thornton is an actor, director, screenwriter, and musician who began his film career in the late 1980s and has since starred in a number of popular and critically acclaimed films. He received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade (1996). Billy Bob Thornton was born on August 4, 1955, in Hot Springs (Garland County), the oldest son of high school basketball coach Billy Ray Thornton and Virginia Faulkner, a psychic. At seven months of age, he set the Clark County record for heaviest infant, at thirty pounds. He has two younger brothers, Jimmy Don and John David. Residing with over a dozen relatives in a shack with no electricity or plumbing, the Thorntons subsisted on …

Thornton, Raymond Hoyt (Ray), Jr.

Law professor Raymond (Ray) Hoyt Thornton Jr. was an Arkansas entrepreneur, lawyer, attorney general, U.S. representative, university president, and Arkansas Supreme Court justice. Thornton also played a key role in fashioning the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon concerning the Watergate cover-up. Ray Thornton was born on July 16, 1928, in Conway (Faulkner County), one of two children of Raymond Thornton Sr. of Sheridan (Grant County) and Wilma Stephens Thornton of Prattsville (Grant County); his mother was the sister of noted business figures Witt Stephens and Jackson T. Stephens. His parents attended Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in Conway (Faulkner County) and eventually returned to Sheridan to live. Thornton’s father served as superintendent of …

Thruston, Henry Clay

Henry Clay Thruston was a Confederate soldier who fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge and in the Camden Expedition, as well as in General Sterling Price’s Missouri Raid of 1864. Thruston is perhaps best known for reportedly being the tallest Confederate soldier of the Civil War at over seven and a half feet tall. Later in life, he worked for P. T. Barnum’s circus, being advertised as the world’s tallest man. Information is sketchy about the early life of Henry Clay Thruston. He was born in South Carolina in either 1830 or 1833, with the exact day variously recorded as May 4 or May 5. His father, Street Thruston, served in the American Revolutionary War, and he had four …

Thurman, Sue Bailey

Author, lecturer, historian, and editor Sue Bailey Thurman was a pioneer in civil rights and equality long before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Her contributions in her advocacy, writings, and speeches helped lay a foundation that many others have built upon. Sue Elvie Bailey was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) on August 26, 1903, one of ten children of educators Rev. Isaac Bailey and Susie Ford Bailey. Her parents emphasized education, religious instruction, and missionary work. They helped to found the forerunner of what became Morris Booker Memorial College in Dermott (Chicot County), a private college funded by African-American Baptists throughout the state. She completed her high school studies at Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia, …

Tillman, John Arthur

John Arthur Tillman was the last person executed by hanging in the state of Arkansas. Accused of murdering a girlfriend, Tillman insisted upon his innocence to the day of his death. John Arthur Tillman was born in January 1891, the third oldest of nine children of John Franklin Tillman, a farmer and cattle breeder, and Lennie Belle Townsell Tillman of Delaware (Logan County). His arrest in 1913 was connected to the March 10 disappearance of Amanda Stephens, age nineteen, who lived north of Delaware. Friends and neighbors said that the two were “seeing each other,” and Stephens left behind a note pinned to her pillow suggesting that she was running away. According to later newspaper reports, she had told friends …

Tillman, John Newton

John Newton Tillman was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Third District of Arkansas in the Sixty-Fourth through the Seventieth Congresses, serving from 1915 to 1929. John N. Tillman was born near Springfield, Missouri, on December 13, 1859, to Newton J. Tillman and Mary Mullins Tillman. The family moved to Arkansas when he was a child, and he attended the local common schools before graduating from the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1880. Following graduation, Tillman taught school while also studying law. He read law in the office of Judge J. M. Pittman until Pittman was elected circuit court judge, at which point Tillman studied with local lawyers Holsinger and …

Tinhiouen

There were actually two men with the name of Tinhiouen, a father and son, who were hereditary chiefs, or caddi, of the Kadohadacho Caddo in the late eighteenth century. After Spain took control of Louisiana, these two chiefs became increasingly important figures in diplomatic and economic affairs among colonial authorities, Creole inhabitants, and the many Native American tribes who lived in and around Spanish Louisiana and Texas. The two men shaped relationships between Spanish colonists and Indian tribes, and they gave the Caddo a favored political position in troubled times. The Kadohadacho were viewed by all other Caddo tribes, and by non-Caddo Indian neighbors, as direct descendants of the mythical or semi-mythical ancient ancestors of all Caddo people. The home …

Tinker, Frank Glasgow

Frank Glasgow Tinker was a distinguished American mercenary pilot for forces of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). A graduate of DeWitt High School and the Naval Academy, Tinker was the top American ace for the Republican Air Force during the Spanish Civil War. Frank Tinker was born on July 14, 1909, in Kaplan, Louisiana, the son of Frank Glasgow and Effie Tinker. He had two sisters. The family moved to DeWitt (Arkansas County) on July 3, 1924. Tinker graduated from high school in DeWitt in 1926 and, at the age of seventeen, joined the U.S. Navy. Tinker spent three years in the navy before receiving a prestigious appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. After graduating …

Tomkievicz, Shirley Jean Abbott

aka: Shirley Abbott

Shirley Jean Abbott Tomkievicz, a magazine editor and writer, achieved her greatest fame for her three volumes of memoirs, which detail the story of her family history and her own coming of age in Hot Springs (Garland County): Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1983), The Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound (1991), and Love’s Apprentice: The Education of a Modern Woman (1998), all written under the name Shirley Abbott. Critics  lauded her books as well-written examinations, not only of her own life, but of the South in an age of transition. Even after becoming a resident of New York, Abbott continues to write about Arkansas for a wide audience in magazines and newspapers. She once commented, “I learned to respect and …

Tomlinson, James Albert “Ike”

James Albert “Ike” Tomlinson was responsible for the revival of the athletics program at Arkansas State University (ASU) after World War II. An athlete who coached five sports, he served as ASU’s head baseball coach for thirty-two years, also serving as athletic director for three decades. He was named Associated Press National Coach of the Year and was selected for induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. In 1993, ASU’s baseball complex, Tomlinson Stadium, was named in his honor. J. A. Tomlinson was born on November 17, 1910, to farmers Frank and Nora Tomlinson in Macon, Illinois. The youngest in his family of three brothers and one sister, he was nicknamed “Ike” as a child, and the childhood nickname …

Tompkins, Rosie Lee

aka: Effie Mae Martin Howard

Rosie Lee Tompkins was the assumed name of Effie Mae Howard, a widely acclaimed African American quiltmaker whose prodigious talents catapulted her to the forefront of contemporary art. As New York Times critic Roberta Smith put it, “Tompkins’s textile art [works]…demolish the category.” Effie Mae Martin (Effie Mae Howard was her married name) was born in Arkansas on September 6, 1936, to Sadie Bell and MacCurey Martin. The oldest of fifteen half-siblings, she grew up picking cotton and helping her mother piece quilts in rural Gould (Lincoln County), where poverty forced the family to use every available scrap of cloth. Howard never completed high school. She moved to Richmond, California, in 1958 and took courses in nursing at various local …

Tomson, Dan Fraser

A native of Tennessee, Dan Fraser Tomson helped organize—and was a charter member of—the first local assembly (or lodge) of the Knights of Labor in Arkansas. He also served as a state organizer and lecturer and, eventually, as the Knights’ highest-ranking state officer. In addition, he edited a weekly newspaper, the Industrial Liberator, which served as the official organ of the Arkansas Knights of Labor, and he became a significant figure in the national Knights of Labor organization. He served in a variety of military- and government-related jobs throughout his life, including as a clerk in Washington DC, copying the Civil War records of Missouri soldiers; a staff member in the Missouri Senate; and a clerk in the Missouri adjutant …

Totten, James

James Totten was an officer in the U.S. Army and was the commander of the Little Rock Arsenal during the Arsenal Crisis of 1861. He later served in the Civil War, commanding units in both the Trans-Mississippi and Western theaters. James Totten was born on September 11, 1818, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, William E. Totten, was a doctor who later served at the Little Rock Arsenal and had a private practice; there is no information on Totten’s mother or siblings. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1841. Commissioned a second lieutenant, he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1847. In 1849–50, Totten served in Florida to help suppress the Seminole Indians. Totten was promoted …

Towbin, Eugene Jonas

Eugene Jonas Towbin moved to Arkansas in 1955 to work at the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital. He was a pioneer in the field of geriatric medicine, and his influence brought the first Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) in the country to Arkansas. He was instrumental in obtaining funding for the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and was one of the founders of the geriatrics program at what is now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). He also supported cultural events and organizations in the Little Rock area. Eugene Towbin was born in New York City on September 18, 1918, to Russian Jewish immigrants Morris and Elena Towbin. He attended public …

Townsend, Wallace

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 …

Townsend, William Cameron “Uncle Cam”

In June 1934, William Cameron Townsend, along with Leonard Livingston Legters, founded a linguistic training program for the purpose of promoting Bible translation among minority language groups. Named Camp Wycliffe, in honor of the first scholar to translate the entire Bible into English, John Wycliffe, the program was based in an old abandoned farmhouse near Sulphur Springs (Benton County). Camp Wycliffe would later become Wycliffe Bible Translators, the founding of which, as historian Dr. Mark Noll affirmed, “may stand symbolically for one of the great Christian events of the age.” Cameron Townsend was born on July 9, 1896, in a one-room farmhouse in Eastvale, California, the first son and fifth child of William Hammond, a poor tenant farmer, and Molly …

Trammell, Bobby Lee

Bobby Lee Trammell was known as a boisterous performer of boogie-woogie-flavored rockabilly music with such songs as “Arkansas Twist” and “You Mostest Girl.” He was later elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives and the Craighead County Quorum Court. Trammell’s high-energy music has been compared to that of fellow Arkansan Sonny Burgess, while his onstage antics drew comparisons to Jerry Lee Lewis. Bobby Lee Trammell was born on January 31, 1934, in Hergett, a small unincorporated community in Craighead County near Jonesboro. He was one of four children born to Wiley and Mae Trammell, who were cotton farmers. His parents were also musicians, with his father playing fiddle and his mother playing the church organ. Trammell was exposed to gospel …

Trapp, George Francis

George Francis Trapp was one of several architects active in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the mid-twentieth century, a period of relative prosperity and growth that included much public and private building. Two qualities consistent throughout his career were sensitivity to siting (judging how a building’s design and material related to the site) and boldness in setting shapes against each other. George Trapp was born on March 20, 1900, in Chicago, Illinois, to Charles C. and Fanny Trapp. The family moved to Little Rock in 1914, and Trapp’s father worked for the Otis Elevator Company and the Big Rock Stone Company. Trapp’s interest in architecture might have been inspired by some of the new tall buildings in Little Rock, such …

Travis, Kathryne Bess Hail

Kathryne Bess Hail Travis was an artist and teacher who was especially known for her still-life paintings of flowers. For a three-year period in the late 1920s, she and her then-husband, artist Olin Travis, ran the Travis Ozark Summer Art School near Cass (Franklin County). Kathryne Bess Hail was born in Ozark (Franklin County) on February 6, 1894. She was the only child of Albert Eugene Hail, who owned a general store, and Maude (Brown) Hail. Her education was financed and closely supervised by a wealthy uncle, Oliver Brown. She studied art in high school and graduated with honors from Galloway College in Searcy (White County) in 1911. She briefly attended a girls’ school in Chicago, Illinois, before enrolling in …

Travis, Olin Herman

Olin Herman Travis was a Dallas-based artist, muralist, and teacher who worked in Arkansas periodically for about twenty years. For a three-year period in the late 1920s, he led the Travis Ozark Summer Art School near Cass (Franklin County). Olin Travis was born in Dallas, Texas, on November 15, 1888. He was the second of six children born to Olin Few Travis and Eulalia (Moncrief) Travis. His father was a printmaker. Travis graduated from Bryan High School in Dallas in 1906 and from Metropolitan Business College in Dallas in about 1908. Interested in art from childhood and encouraged by his high school art teacher, Travis studied briefly in Dallas under Max Hagendorn. In 1909, he enrolled in the School of …

Trent, Alphonso E. “Phonnie”

Alphonso E. “Phonnie” Trent was a nationally renowned jazz pianist and “territory” band leader from Fort Smith (Sebastian County). (“Territory” bands were those that traveled outside the large eastern markets, such as New York City.) He led the Alphonso Trent Orchestra, a group of young African American musicians who toured the country, made several recordings, and had a lengthy engagement at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, Texas. During that engagement, the band became the first group of Black musicians to be featured on regional broadcasts over WFAA radio in Dallas. Alphonso Trent was born in Fort Smith on October 24, 1902, the son of E. O. Trent and Hattie S. Smith. Trent’s father was one of the first African American graduates …

Tribou, George

Father George William Tribou was an influential figure in Catholic educational and community affairs in Arkansas, primarily through his position as principal and rector of Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock (Pulaski County). George Tribou was born in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, on April 14, 1924, to George and Mary Tribou. His father was an electrician, and his mother was a waitress; he had two sisters. After high school, he entered seminary in Philadelphia and completed the equivalent of a college curriculum. Area seminaries in the Northeast were rather crowded, so he relocated to St. John Catholic Seminary in Little Rock to complete his education for the priesthood. He was ordained as a Catholic priest on September 1, 1949. His …

Trice, Will Carl

Will Carl Trice is an accomplished theater producer who has received multiple Tony Awards for his various productions, among other accolades. He began serving as the executive artistic director of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre (the Rep) in 2019. William Carl Trice was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County) on January 31, 1979, to William Trice and Judy Trice. He grew up in Little Rock, where he graduated from Central High School in 1997. Trice’s father was a family lawyer and his mother a theater teacher at Hall High School; both performed in the Arkansas Bar Association’s Gridiron Show, a satirical musical production that pokes fun at prominent figures in politics, business, and law. Trice’s sister, Kathryn Pryor, is a lawyer …

Trickey, Minnijean Brown

Minnijean Brown Trickey made history as one of the Little Rock Nine, the nine African American students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The world watched as they braved constant intimidation and threats from those who opposed desegregation of the formerly all-white high school. Minnijean Brown, the eldest of four children of Willie and Imogene Brown, was born on September 11, 1941, in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Her mother was a homemaker and nurse’s aid during the crisis, and her father was an independent mason and landscaping contractor. She is the sister of the late Bobby Brown, who was the president of Black United Youth (BUY) in Arkansas in the late 1960s. Although all of the Nine …

Trieber, Jacob

Jacob Trieber of Helena (Phillips County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County) was the first Jew to serve as a federal judge in the United States. Serving from 1900 to 1927 as judge for the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Arkansas, he became known in judicial circles as a “genius as lawyer and jurist.” He presided over more than 1,000 cases annually, kept his docket current, and had time to serve many assignments outside his own district. He issued nationally important rulings on controversies that included antitrust cases, railroad litigation, prohibition cases, and mail fraud; some of his rulings, such as those regarding civil rights and wildlife conservation, have implications today. His broad interpretation of the constitutional guarantees of the …

Trieschmann, John Werner, IV

John Werner Trieschmann IV is a playwright and professor living in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Trieschmann’s many plays have been staged by Moving Arts in Los Angeles, California; Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York; the New Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts; Red Octopus Productions in Little Rock; and other companies, as well as by countless middle schools and high schools in the United States and abroad. First-prize winner of the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans New Play Competition, Trieschmann was also the first playwright to have been honored with the prestigious Porter Prize in Arkansas (1994). Werner Trieschmann was born on September 9, 1964, in Hot Springs (Garland County), the oldest of four boys. His father, John Trieschmann, was a …

Trimble, Jackson Stewart (J. S.)

Jackson Stewart Trimble was an influential figure in the development of Independence County in Arkansas’s early years.  J. S. Trimble was born on March 28, 1815, in Smithland, Kentucky, to James Trimble and Elizabeth Stewart Trimble. In 1817, the family left Kentucky and ventured into what would become Arkansas, settling in an area about five miles southwest of Batesville (Independence County). Trimble grew up there and received his early education in the county’s common schools and at Batesville. After his formal schooling ended, Trimble became a farmer. In 1850, he married Catherine P. Hamilton. The couple had a daughter, Elvira.  That same year, Trimble entered politics, successfully biding to represent Independence County in the lower house of the Arkansas General Assembly. A devotee of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, he ran as a Democrat. In …

Trimble, James William

James William Trimble was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Third District of Arkansas in the Seventy-ninth through the Eighty-ninth Congresses, serving from 1945 to 1967. James W. Trimble was born in Osage (Carroll County) on February 3, 1894, the oldest of four sons and six daughters born to Allen Trimble and Ana McFarlane Trimble. He attended a variety of rural schools that operated on three-month terms, but he overcame this inconsistent preparation to graduate from high school in Green Forest (Carroll County) in 1913. He then worked his way through the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) as a janitor, receiving his degree in 1917. After graduation, Trimble taught history at …

Trimble, Mike

Mike Trimble was an Arkansas-born writer who had a celebrated career as a reporter and editor for six different newspapers in Arkansas and Texas. His career spanned forty-eight years, starting at the Texarkana Gazette and followed by jobs at the Arkansas Gazette, Arkansas Times, Pine Bluff Commercial, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and Denton Record-Chronicle. His remarkable observational skills and down-to-earth writing lent unusual humanity to his articles—whether they were news, features, or columns—and he always developed a large and fanatical following wherever he went, although the burden of high expectations and low self-confidence often led him to move to something else and start over. Travis Mac Trimble was born on November 3, 1943, to Edgar Mac Trimble and Frances Trim Trimble, schoolteachers …

Trimble, Vance

Vance Henry Trimble was a prolific award-winning journalist, biographer, and newspaperman from Harrison (Boone County). In 1960, Trimble won the Pulitzer Prize for national coverage, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished Washington coverage, and the Raymond Clapper Award for that year’s best reporting. Vance Trimble was born in Harrison on July 6, 1913. His father, Guy L. Trimble, was a lawyer, and his mother, Josie Trimble, was a poet and writer. By 1920, anti-union violence and mob rule, culminating in what has been called the Harrison Railroad Riot, forced Guy Trimble to resign as mayor and move his family to Okemah, Oklahoma, where Vance Trimble grew up. Trimble’s mother directed plays at Okemah’s Crystal Theater, and when Trimble was …

Troxell, Leona

Leona Troxell was a political activist who played a major role in the development of the Republican Party in Arkansas, her adopted home. She was also involved with the Republican Party at the national level. Leona Anderson was born on April 22, 1913, in Johnstown, New York, to Frank and Clara Anderson. When she was young, the family moved to Iowa, settling in LeMars. Her father was the executive secretary of the Iowa Baptist Convention for sixteen years. Anderson graduated from North High School in Des Moines in 1930 and then attended Drake University in Des Moines. Active in the student community, she was president of the Drake University YWCA. She graduated from Drake in 1934 with a liberal arts …

Trulock, Amanda Beardsley

Amanda Beardsley Trulock was an antebellum woman from Connecticut who married a Georgia cotton planter, migrated to Arkansas, and eventually became a plantation proprietor and sole owner of sixty-two slaves near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). She was one among the small number of American women from abolitionist New England who married into a slave-owning family before embracing the institution of slavery herself. However, largely due to her “Yankee” heritage and continued association with her New England family, Trulock was an atypical example of an antebellum slaveholder in the Delta. Her personal papers (primarily correspondence to her Connecticut family) represent an important documentation of plantation life, the Civil War, and emancipation in Arkansas history. Born on April 22, 1811, to Nicholas …

Tuberville, Tommy

Tommy Tuberville was a successful college football coach who, in 2020, was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. Tuberville held the position of head coach at several major universities but began his career coaching high school football at Hermitage (Bradley County). His first college coaching position was in 1980 as an assistant at Arkansas State University (ASU) in Jonesboro (Craighead County). Thomas Hawley (Tommy) Tuberville, youngest of three children of Charles and Olive Tuberville, was born on September 18, 1954, in Camden (Ouachita County). He was raised in Ouachita County and graduated from Harmony Grove High School in 1972. He attended Southern State College (now Southern Arkansas University) in Magnolia (Columbia County), where he lettered for …

Tuck, Annabelle Davis Clinton Imber

Annabelle Davis Clinton Imber Tuck was the first woman elected justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court and, as a trial judge, wrote the original order that reshaped the financing of public education in the state. While a chancery judge in Pulaski County in 1994, she issued an order declaring the state’s system of funding and operating its public schools unconstitutional and gave the Arkansas General Assembly two years to produce schools that guaranteed every child the same opportunity for a good education, as the state constitution required. Ten years later, the case, Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, resulted in sweeping reforms, including school consolidation and changes in tax structures, that the Supreme Court declared had finally complied with …

Tucker, Betty Jeane Allen

Betty Jeanne Allen Tucker is the wife of Jim Guy Tucker (the forty-third governor of Arkansas) and was the state’s thirty-eighth first lady. Outside of politics, she is best known for her work with the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Betty Jeanne Allen was born on February 28, 1943, in Jackson, Mississippi, to Emmett Allen and Gertrude Allen; she was raised in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Her father served during World War II as an aviator and later practiced law in Brookhaven. During the war, Allan lived with her mother’s parents, who owned a farm and had a lucrative cotton-trading business. She married Lance Alworth in 1958 and …

Tucker, Francis William (Frank)

Francis William (Frank) Tucker came to Arkansas from Massachusetts, first settling in Lawrence County, where he managed (and later co-owned) the Clover Bend plantation. He later moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he became chair of the state Republican Party and served as U.S. Collector of Revenues. Frank W. Tucker was born on December 3, 1843, at Canton, Massachusetts, to Francis William Tucker and Prudence Hoyt Tucker. As an adult, he went by the name Frank and also appears in documents as Captain or Colonel F. W. Tucker. In August 1862, he enlisted in the Fiftieth Massachusetts Infantry. His daughter Ruth wrote in her unpublished biography of family friend Alice French (an author who wrote under the name Octave …

Tucker, Jim Guy, Jr.

aka: James Guy Tucker Jr.

James Guy Tucker, the forty-third governor of Arkansas, had a brief gubernatorial career that abruptly ended due to criminal conviction. His administration carried Arkansas from the end of the Bill Clinton administration, during which Tucker essentially acted as governor the last year because of Clinton’s campaigning for president, to the beginning of the Mike Huckabee gubernatorial administration, which remained in power long enough to be stopped only by term limits. In his personal life, Tucker weathered political challenges, survived health problems, and faced a criminal indictment. Jim Guy Tucker was born on June 13, 1943, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to James Guy and Willie Maude (White) Tucker. His family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) when he was a child, …

Turnbo, Silas Claiborne

Silas Claiborne Turnbo was a former Confederate soldier who spent much of his life collecting reminiscences of life in the Ozark Mountains. These tales are preserved in several archival institutions and provide important primary source information on the region. Silas Turnbo was born on May 26, 1844, on Beaver Creek in Taney County, Missouri, one of eight children of the farming family of James C. Turnbo and Eliza Turnbo. By 1862, the family was living in Arkansas in Marion County, and the young Turnbo enlisted as a private in Company A, Twenty-Seventh Arkansas Infantry, in June 1862, at Yellville (Marion County). He rose to the rank of third sergeant in 1863 but resigned that rank on January 31, 1864, and …

Turner Bell, Debbye

aka: Debrah Lynn Turner

Debrah Lynn (Debbye) Turner Bell, who grew up in Jonesboro (Craighead County), was crowned Miss America 1990. After her reign as Miss America, she became a veterinarian, has appeared on national television, and is a motivational speaker on youth-related and Christian topics. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1994. “Debbye” Turner was born on September 19, 1965, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Gussie Turner and Frederick Turner Jr., who was stationed there in the military. As a child, she set her goal to become a veterinarian but recognized the financial challenges ahead, especially after her parents’ divorce. Living in Jonesboro with her sister, Suzette, and her mother, who became an academic counselor at Arkansas State University …

Turner, Frederick Cornelius Jr.

Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Cornelius Turner Jr. was a commander of U.S. Army Forces at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium. During his military career, he served in South Vietnam on three separate occasions, during which time he commanded a detachment of Armed Door Gunners, a company in the Twenty-seventh Infantry Regiment, and was a senior advisor to South Vietnamese Regional and Popular Forces in Long An province. In 1969, he returned to his alma mater, Arkansas State University (ASU), to serve as an assistant professor of military science and tactics, making him the university’s first Black faculty member. Frederick Cornelius Turner Jr. was born in North Little Rock (Pulaski County) on June 15, 1937, to Frederick Turner …

Turner, Grover White “Buddy,” Jr.

G. W. “Buddy” Turner Jr. was an influential member of the Arkansas House of Representatives in the latter part of the twentieth century who helped shape state policy throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Grover White Turner Jr. was born on August 15, 1923, in Thornton (Calhoun County) to Grover White Turner and Ollie Robinson Turner. He grew up in Rison (Cleveland County), where he helped his family on the farm his father had bought during the Great Depression. In addition to picking and chopping cotton on the farm, he worked at the family store, which, in addition to a sawmill, his father had also acquired. Eventually, Turner became an accomplished meat cutter. By the time he graduated from Rison …

Turner, Jesse

Jesse Turner, a North Carolina native, was a lawyer and politician who played a major but fickle role in Arkansas’s long odyssey through slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. He finally turned to economic development, principally railroads. He was a leader of the Whig Party in Arkansas until its disintegration during the Civil War, and he then took a respite from politics; during Reconstruction, he returned as a Democrat. Turner was elected to both houses of the Arkansas General Assembly, was the federal prosecuting attorney in the new United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, and served briefly as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He spent most of his life in Van Buren (Crawford …

Turner, Otis Hawes

Otis Hawes Turner was a widely respected trial lawyer who practiced in Arkadelphia (Clark County) and then later served as a circuit judge before being appointed justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court by Governor Bill Clinton in 1990. Otis Turner was born on October 18, 1927, in Arkadelphia, one of seven children of Cleveland “Cleve” (or “Bear”) Turner and Laura Eva Flanagin Turner. Before he became a pharmacist, Turner’s father was a baseball player from Hope (Hempstead County) who played in three professional leagues in Arkansas and Texas in the first decade of the twentieth century. Two of his sons, Cleve Jr. and Otis, inherited his athletic acumen. The elder Turner attended Henderson College and Ouachita Baptist College at Arkadelphia …