Entry Type: Thing - Starting with F

Fowler Cemetery

The Fowler Cemetery is located approximately two miles east of Damascus, along the southeastern border of Van Buren County. The property is just over an acre and is representative of small, rural family cemeteries found throughout Arkansas. There are eighty-nine marked burials on the grounds. While the cemetery mostly contains members of the Fowler family, there are also individuals from other local families who were related to the Fowlers by marriage. It was listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places on August 5, 2020. The Fowlers were one of the many families attracted to the Damascus area in the late nineteenth century, during the cotton farming boom. The family initially settled in the Muddy Bayou area, along the White …

Fowler House

aka: Absalom Fowler House
The Absalom Fowler House, located at 502 East Seventh Street, is one of the few remaining antebellum houses in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in the twenty-first century. Constructed in 1840, it served as a private residence until 1923, when it was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Little Rock. Due to its distinctive Greek Revival–style architecture and unique design, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 1973. Is also part of the MacArthur Park Historic District. In 1976, the Absalom Fowler House became the centerpiece of the Flower Square apartment complex. The exteriors of both the house and the detached kitchen remain relatively unaltered from their original state. Due to its state …

Franke’s Cafeteria

Franke’s Cafeteria was established by C. A. Franke in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1924. It was widely recognized as a culinary institution in the city and was one of the oldest restaurants in Arkansas before its closure in 2020. After leaving the military, C. A. Franke opened a doughnut shop in 1919 on West Capitol Avenue and then a bakery at 111 West 3rd Street in 1922. After determining that bakeries would soon spread and start competing with his own, he sold the bakery to Safeway and switched to the cafeteria business. He opened the first Franke’s Cafeteria in 1924 at 115 West Capitol. Starting in the 1920s, the cafeteria saw four generations of Franke family members take the …

Franklin County Courthouse, Northern District

The Franklin County Courthouse for the Northern District, located at 211 West Commercial in Ozark (Franklin County), was constructed as a two-story structure fashioned in Classical Moderne style with Italian Renaissance design influences. This building is the fourth courthouse in this county seat. Franklin County emerged from part of Crawford County late in 1837. Ozark was designated as the county seat in 1838, and the first court proceedings were held in a school house without windows. The first building designated as a courthouse was built in 1840 on the northwestern corner of the square. This one-story, frame building, which measured twenty square feet, included fifteen windows, one door, and a stove. D. L. Bourland, the county treasurer, submitted the $400 bid for …

Franklin County Courthouse, Southern District

The Franklin County Courthouse for the Southern District, located at 607 East Main Street in Charleston (Franklin County), was constructed as a two-story structure fashioned in Classical Revival Style. Franklin County emerged from part of Crawford County late in 1837. Between 1838 and 1885, Ozark (Franklin County) was the only county seat. Due to difficulty people faced in crossing the Arkansas River, Governor Simon P. Hughes approved an act on March 14, 1885, that created two court districts within Franklin County. The court in Ozark became the Northern District, and Charleston was designated as the county seat for the Southern District in 1901. The Arkansas River drew the boundary line between districts. In June 1885, the sheriff of Franklin County obtained a two-story …

Freedom Centers, Houses, Schools, and Libraries

While operating in Arkansas, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) established numerous Freedom Centers, Freedom Houses, Freedom Schools, and Freedom Libraries to foster knowledge and self-respect among African Americans. Freedom Houses were living quarters, administrative workspaces, and community meeting spaces for SNCC volunteers and others. Freedom Centers included Freedom Libraries and Freedom School spaces. Freedom Schools were also established in churches, homes, and businesses to counteract unconstitutional educational facilities and a lack of self-awareness and self-acceptance in the African American community. In October 1962, a new branch of SNCC was established in Little Rock (Pulaski County) with the intention of harnessing the rising tide of Black political consciousness in the South. The branch leader, William (Bill) Hansen, arrived in Little …

Freedom Suits

In the freedom lawsuits initiated before the Civil War, enslaved people brought suit against enslavers, claiming they were entitled to their freedom. The legal basis for the freedom suits varied. Claims were usually based on the enslaved individual having descended from free ancestors or having been the resident of a free state or territory, a situation that could have nullified their enslavement. However, such suits also arose when a group of enslaved people believed their owner had freed them—usually in a will—and they filed suit to ensure the master’s heirs upheld the legal directive. Freedom suits were usually brought by men, but women also undertook such suits on their own behalf, as well as their children’s, given that the legal …

Frenchman’s Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church and Cemetery

aka: Cato United Methodist Church and Cemetery
Frenchman’s Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church, South, located at 13915 Frenchman Mountain Road in the Cato community on the Pulaski–Faulkner County line, is an 1880 wood-frame building altered to its current appearance in 1945. The church and its associated cemetery were listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 22, 1976. The Frenchman Mountain Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized in 1872, with the Reverend R. L. Kirkman ministering to the congregation’s needs, in addition to those of another dozen churches. A log structure was erected in the winter of 1872–1873 to serve as a church, with Kirkman preaching in it for the first time that spring. The Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad company donated the land on …

Freshwater Drum

aka: Grunter
aka: Gaspergou
The freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens) belongs to the order Perciformes and family Sciaenidae; it is the only freshwater member of the family. Freshwater drum are endemic to freshwater environs of the Americas, and their distributional range extends as far north as the Hudson Bay of Canada and reaches as far south as the Usumacinta River Basin of Guatemala. In the United States, eastward distribution includes the eastern Appalachians westward as far as Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. This fish appears to have the greatest latitudinal range of any freshwater fish in North America. In Arkansas, A. grunniens occurs throughout the state but mainly is found in the larger lakes and rivers. The closest living relatives of A. grunniens are a group …

Fried Dill Pickles

In 1960, Bernell “Fatman” Austin (born on February 26, 1921) leased a parcel of land east of Atkins (Pope County) from Griffin Oil Co. for ten dollars a month and began building a drive-in restaurant. The Duchess Drive In, a small pink building, opened for business in April 1960, just across the highway from Atkins Pickle Company, the pickle capital of Arkansas. As business increased, with U.S. Highway 64 being the main road to Little Rock (Pulaski County), Austin started toying with the idea of a gimmick to attract additional business. The first fried dill pickles ever sold anywhere were sold in the summer of 1963 at fifteen cents for an order of fifteen hamburger slices. They still did not …

Fulbright Industries

Fulbright Industries was a furniture manufacturing business in Fayetteville (Washington County) owned and operated by the local Fulbright family. In the early 1950s, Fulbright Industries produced distinctive modern furniture designed by a native of Fayetteville, the internationally renowned architect Edward Durell Stone. Fulbright Industries was an outgrowth of Phipps Lumber Company, also in Fayetteville and owned by the Fulbright family since 1920. U.S. senator J. William Fulbright, scion of the Fulbright family, served as Phipps’s president. Phipps manufactured farm implements, including wooden plow handles and other tool components. In 1941, the Fulbrights purchased Springfield Wagon Company and subsequently moved the operation to Fayetteville, broadening the family’s manufacturing capabilities. As demand for wagons plummeted following World War II, production dwindled at …

Fulbright Memorandum

The so-called Fulbright Memorandum was a devastating critique of the National Education Program (NEP), which was founded in the mid-twentieth century by Harding College (now Harding University) president George S. Benson to disseminate his ideas on Americanism. These included three fundamental principles: belief in God, belief in the U.S. Constitution, and belief in the free-enterprise system; the NEP wedded fundamentalist Christian religion with free-enterprise economic thought, which became foundational to the conservative movement that gained prominence with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The memorandum was sent by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in June 1961. The memorandum mentioned by name Benson; Clifton L. Ganus Jr., who had become vice president of …

Fuller-Shannon House

The Fuller-Shannon House is located in the Parker’s Woodland Hills subdivision of Jonesboro (Craighead County). The house, completed in mid-1969, was designed by notable local firm of Stuck, Frier, Lane & Scott, Inc. The design of the house was based on the work of internationally renowned architect, and Arkansas native, Edward Durell Stone, specifically his “modern dogtrot” designs of the mid-1950s. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 2020. The Parker’s Woodland Hills subdivision was created by brothers Hubert J. and Olan E. Parker Jr. and was laid out to take advantage of the hilly nature of the area. Streets were placed in the valleys to give the neighborhood natural drainage and inhibit standing …

Funeral Customs, Traditional (Ozark Mountains)

Settlers to the Arkansas Ozarks brought burial traditions with them from their home states of Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky. Prior to the establishment of a funeral industry with undertakers, embalmers, and factory-made caskets, every job associated with burial was handled by members of the deceased’s community. This work required practical know-how, physical strength, and access to materials, and was influenced by religious custom, folklore, and superstition. The modern death-care industry evolved from the trade of cabinet making, when stores that made and sold furniture added wooden coffins and caskets to their wares. By the late 1800s, many such businesses also offered the use of elaborate, horse-drawn hearses; burial goods (such as shrouds); and, later, embalming. The Arkansas …

Fungi

Arkansas is home to a diverse and remarkable group of fungi, which are separated by mycologists (biologists who specialize in the study of fungi, or mycology) into species representing the true fungi belonging to the kingdom Fungi (e.g., chytrids, pin molds, sugar molds, club fungi, yeasts, sac fungi, and mushrooms) and a hodgepodge of other fungus-like protists (e.g., slime molds, water molds, downy mildews). Members of the kingdom Fungi are descended from a common ancestor, while fungus-like protists, though not necessarily closely related to each other or to the true fungi, are similar to true fungi in appearance and action. Characteristics of Fungi Although the number of fungal species in Arkansas is not known, fungi are quite diverse worldwide. According …