Entry Type: Person - Starting with C

Compere, Ebenezer Lee (E. L.)

Ebenezer Lee (E. L.) Compere was the son of pioneer Baptist missionary Lee Compere, who came to Arkansas between 1850 and 1860 because E. L. and brother Thomas H. pastored Baptist churches in western Arkansas. The elder Compere had previously been a missionary in the Creek Nation, having come from England to Jamaica and then the United States with wife Susannah Voysey Compere to do missionary work. E. L. Compere was born on February 6, 1833, near Montgomery, Alabama, shortly before his family moved from Alabama to Mississippi. On July 23, 1849, he was baptized at Montaches Creek Baptist Church in Itawamba County, Mississippi, and in 1852 was called to preach. From 1852 to 1857, Compere was educated at Mercer …

Compere, Lee

Baptist missionary Lee Compere did missionary work with the Creek Nation in Georgia and Alabama. He later joined his sons in Arkansas and assisted them with their own religious work. Lee Compere was born on November 3, 1790, in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England, to John Compere and Grace Fox Compere. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by a Baptist family and adopted their faith. On September 23, 1815, he married Susannah Voysey in London. Susannah was a relative of theologian and founder of Methodism John Wesley. She decided to become a missionary and to use her inheritance to fund her missionary work. On October 18, 1815, the Baptist Mission Society of England appointed the couple as missionaries to …

Compton, Freeman Walker

Freeman W. Compton was an eighteenth-century lawyer from North Carolina who moved to Arkansas and, with his wife’s dowry, acquired a large plantation in Dallas County. He then spent the four years of the Civil War and more as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. The war had a turbulent effect on both his private life and his jurisprudence. While he was on the Supreme Court but living on his plantation ninety miles away from his office in the state’s temporary capital in Hempstead County, Compton escaped capture by the Federal cavalry by hiding for several days in the attic of the only hotel in the nearby town of Princeton (Dallas County). He was disfranchised and booted from the …

Compton, Neil Ernest

Neil Ernest Compton of Bentonville (Benton County) was a physician of obstetrics by profession and a conservationist by avocation. He is widely recognized as the founder of the Ozark Society to Save the Buffalo River, which he and his associates initiated on May 24, 1962, at a meeting in Fayetteville (Washington County). Today, it is known as the Ozark Society, Inc. Its original goal was to stop the construction of two proposed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams on the Buffalo River. Neil Compton was born on August 1, 1912, at Falling Springs Flats in Benton County, the son of David Compton Jr. and Ida Etta Wilmoth Compton. He attended elementary school at Bozarth, a rural school near Gentry (Benton County). …

Cone, James Hal

James Hal Cone became known as the father of black liberation theology, which he described as a “theological identity that was accountable to the life, history, and culture of African-American people.” Cone often discussed the impact that growing up in Bearden (Ouachita County) and attending the Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church had on his life. Both powerfully influenced his thinking: Bearden for the pain and suffering inflicted on African Americans, and Macedonia as a place where he encountered Jesus. Cone published numerous books on black liberation theology and lectured at more than 1,000 universities and community organizations throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Born to Charles and Lucy Cone in Fordyce (Dallas County) on …

Cone, John Carroll

John Carroll Cone was a promoter of aviation in Arkansas and established two significant air organizations in the late 1920s—the 154th Observation Squadron of the Arkansas National Guard and the Command-Aire manufacturing company. During his later career, he advised two U.S. presidents in commercial aviation policy. Carroll Cone was born on July 4, 1891, in Snyder (Ashley County) to Jesse H. and Annie A. Cone. He attended Ouachita Baptist College, now Ouachita Baptist University (OBU), prior to enlisting in the United States Army and volunteering for training in the Army Air Service. A veteran fighter pilot with three probable kills but only one confirmed kill in combat during World War I, Cone proved more valuable as an instructor than as …

Conger, John William

John William Conger served as president of five colleges, including three in Arkansas: Searcy College, Central College (now Central Baptist College), and Ouachita College (now Ouachita Baptist University). John Conger was born on February 20, 1857, in Jackson, Tennessee, the seventh of ten children born to Philander Drew Whitehill Conger and Eliza Jane Chambers Conger. His father was an architect and a general contractor and served several terms as mayor of Jackson. His great-grandfather, James B. Conger, invented the turbine water wheel and contributed to Scientific American magazine. Conger earned an AB in 1878 and an AM degree in mental sciences in 1885 from Southwest Baptist University (now Union University in Tennessee). He became president at the Odd Fellows College …

Conley, Michael Alex

Michael Alex Conley is a former basketball player and track and field athlete for the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). One of the most successful combination long and triple jumpers in history, he achieved career long jump bests of 8.46 meters outdoors (1996) and 8.31 meters indoors (1986), and triple jump bests of 17.87 meters outdoors (1987) and 17.76 meters indoors (1987). The latter stood as the world record until 1994. Ranked among the world’s top ten triple jumpers from 1983 to 1996, Conley claimed number one in 1984, 1986, 1989, 1992, 1993, and 1994. He ranked second in the world in the long jump in 1985. In all, Conley won thirty-three national and international horizontal jump …

Connelly, Mary

Mary Connelly was an early educator in southern Arkansas. Operating a school first in Camden (Ouachita County) and later in Arkadelphia (Clark County), she helped establish the latter city’s reputation as an educational center. Mary Connelly was born to the Reverend Henry Connelly and Jane Johnson Connelly in Newburgh, New York; her exact date of birth is unknown. The oldest of eleven children, she graduated from the Presbyterian-affiliated Washington Female Seminary in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1855. Connelly worked in Camden during the Civil War as a teacher. At the outbreak of the war, she was teaching at a private school in the town and was unable to secure transportation home to New York. She remained in Camden for the duration …

Conner, Laura Cornelius

Laura Nancy Cornelius Conner was a prison reformer, educator, and farmer. In the 1920s, she served on the penitentiary board during the governorship of Thomas McRae. Conner was shocked by the conditions in the Arkansas prisons, but despite support from prisoners, community leaders, and legal experts, she was unable to make progress in reforming the penitentiary. She returned to her hometown, where she was an educator and planter until her death. Laura Cornelius was born on October 24, 1864 in Augusta (Woodruff County). She was one of eight children born to William Cornelius and Arabella White Cornelius. Arabella Cornelius died when Laura was three. After the death of her father in 1876, Laura moved in with her sister Ella and …

Conway, Elias Nelson

Elias Nelson Conway—born into an extended kinship group known as “The Family,” which came to dominate the politics of early Arkansas—was elected the fifth governor of the state of Arkansas. He served in that position longer than anyone until Orval Faubus, a century later. His eight years in office were a time of relative prosperity for the growing state as the government dealt with issues such as internal improvements and debt left from failed banks. The mounting tensions that led to the Civil War began to play out during Conway’s second term, and the voters ended the Family’s political domination in the election of 1860 when they rejected Conway’s choice for a successor. Elias Conway was born on May 17, …

Conway, Henry Wharton

Henry Wharton Conway was the delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Territory of Arkansas. He served in the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Congresses from 1823 until his death in 1827. Henry Wharton Conway was born on March 18, 1793, near Greeneville, Tennessee. One of ten children born to Thomas Conway and Ann Rector Conway, he received his early education by private tutors before enlisting in the U.S. Army. Serving in the War of 1812, he was commissioned as an ensign (at the time an army rank, but one that was ended after the war) and was promoted to lieutenant in 1813, serving through the end of the war and into peacetime. Conway was a member of the …

Conway, James Sevier

James Sevier Conway was the first governor for the state of Arkansas, elected in 1836 through strong family ties to both prominent Arkansans and President Andrew Jackson’s administration. His tenure as governor was best known for economic issues, surplus funds in the state treasury, legislation creating the state’s first banks, and a national depression, which consumed the surplus and contributed to a collapse in the banking system. James Conway was born on December 4, 1796, in Greene County, Tennessee, the son of Thomas Conway and Anne Rector. Wealthy by frontier standards, the Conway family grew corn and cotton and raised livestock on their Tennessee plantation. Conway’s father employed private tutors to teach his seven sons and three daughters. In 1818, …

Conway, Polly

aka: Mary Jane Bradley Conway
Mary Jane “Polly” Bradley Conway, the wife of Arkansas’s first governor, was a stable mother, supportive spouse, and respected prominent citizen. She was also a pioneer in what was then a primitive corner of the state. Polly Bradley was born on August 31, 1809, at or near Lebanon in Wilson County, Tennessee, to John Bradley and Jane Barton. Bradley’s father died the year she was born. After the War of 1812, her uncles Captain Hugh Bradley and Fleetwood Herndon moved to Arkansas. Bradley, her mother, her sisters, and her stepfather also migrated to Arkansas Territory, settling on the “Long Prairie” of the future Lafayette County. On December 21, 1826, Bradley married James Sevier Conway, presumably on Long Prairie, where he …

Cook, Doris Marie

Doris Marie Cook achieved many firsts in accounting, accounting education, and business in Arkansas. Cook was the first woman to receive the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designation in the state, the first woman to be hold the rank of university professor at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County), the first female member of the Arkansas Society of CPAs, the first woman to serve on and become president of the National Council for the Beta Alpha Psi academic honor organization, and the first woman to hold an endowed lectureship chair at UA. Doris Cook was born in Fayetteville on June 11, 1924. She was the second of two children born to Ira Cook and Mettie Dorman Cook. Cook …

Cook, Everett Richard

Everett Richard Cook was a Marianna (Lee County) cotton broker who became a World War I flying ace, a successful businessman, and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Eighth and Twelfth Air Forces during World War II. Everett Richard Cook was born on December 12, 1894, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Jesse Cook and Ollie Belle Everett Cook. The family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1899. After an education in the Memphis public schools, Cook got a job at the Dillard and Coffin cotton firm, where he learned about the cotton business. In 1916, with $1,000 he had saved, Cook moved to Marianna to run his own business from an office in the Bank of Marianna. “I was rather …

Cook, Gilbert Richard

Gilbert Richard Cook, born in Texarkana (Miller County), was a career U.S. Army officer who served in France in World War I and as deputy commander of George S. Patton’s Third Army during World War II. Gilbert R. Cook was born on December 30, 1889, in Texarkana, the son of attorney Joseph E. Cook and Mary A. Young Cook. He attended local schools but was drawn toward a military career, the result, perhaps, of being the grandson of men who had served in both the Confederate and U.S. armies. He was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1908, graduating on June 12, 1912, after serving as a cadet sergeant and playing on the academy’s baseball and …

Cook, Virgil Young (V. Y.)

Virgil Young (V. Y.) Cook was a veteran of two wars—the Civil War and the Spanish-American War—who founded the town of Olyphant (Jackson County) and eventually accumulated thousands of acres of land, running a vast plantation enterprise in northeastern Arkansas. His home in Batesville (Independence County), today known as the Cook-Morrow House, is on the National Register of Historic Places. V. Y. Cook was born on November 14, 1848, in Boydsville, Kentucky, to William Detterline (Bill) Cook and Pernecia Dodds Cook. Cook attended subscription schools in Boydsville, obtaining the equivalent of an elementary education. Kentucky was a divided state in the Civil War, and even though it stayed with the Union, there were many Confederate sympathizers living there. One was …

Cooke, Charles Maynard “Savvy,” Jr.

Fort Smith (Sebastian County) native Charles Maynard “Savvy” Cooke Jr. rose through the ranks of the U.S. Navy from academy cadet to four-star admiral during an extraordinary career spanning more than two decades and two world wars. He survived a sinking submarine; came under attack at Pearl Harbor; had shrapnel strike his helmet on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion; attended wartime summits in Casablanca, Quebec, Cairo, Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam; and stood on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay to witness the Japanese surrender. Charles Cooke Jr. was born in Fort Smith on December 19, 1886, on the family farm of Charles Cooke Sr., a local attorney who later served as mayor and U.S. attorney, and …

Cooper, John Alfred, Jr.

John Cooper Jr. led Cooper Communities, the real estate development company founded by his father, John A. Cooper Sr., through a period of outstanding growth. The firm was a pioneer and a recognized leader in the field of recreational and retirement living. John Alfred Cooper Jr. was born on September 13, 1938, in Memphis, Tennessee, to John Alfred Cooper Sr. and Mildred Borum Cooper, spending much of his youth in West Memphis (Crittenden County). He had three sisters. He graduated from Christian Brothers High School in Memphis and spent a post-graduate year at the Marion Military Institute in Marion, Alabama. He attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). There, he majored in business and was a member …

Cooper, John Alfred, Sr.

John A. Cooper Sr. was the founder, chief executive officer, and board chair of Cooper Communities, Inc. He and the business he founded were pioneers in establishing the recreational and retirement community industry in America. His first master-planned retirement community was Cherokee Village (Fulton and Sharp counties), which he formed near the northeastern Arkansas town of Hardy (Sharp County). His company eventually developed various projects across the southeastern United States, including the Arkansas communities of Cherokee Village in 1954, Bella Vista (Benton County) in 1965, Hot Springs Village (Garland and Saline Counties) in 1970, and Sienna Lake (Pulaski County) in 2005, as well as Tellico Village, Tennessee in 1986; Savanah Lakes Village, South Carolina, in 1989; Stonebridge Village, Missouri, in …

Corbin, Donald Louis

Donald Louis Corbin had a career as a state legislator and appellate judge spanning forty-four years. As a state representative, Corbin developed a reputation as a plainspoken maverick, and, as a judge, a reputation for pushing his colleagues to take unpopular stands, particularly on social issues. As his twenty-four-year career as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court was coming to an end in 2014, he had a bitter disagreement with other justices whom he thought had connived to avoid rendering a decision in the controversy over legalizing marriages of same-sex couples. Donald L. Corbin was born on March 29, 1938, in Hot Springs (Garland County), where his father, Louis Emerson Corbin, was a meat-market manager for a Kroger grocery …