December 21, 2011

Many of Arkansas’s seventy-five counties are named in honor of United States politicians. Poinsett County, which was organized on February 28, 1838, was named in honor of Joel Roberts Poinsett, who was secretary of war at the time of the county’s creation. Poinsett, who served as the first U.S. minister to Mexico, is perhaps best known for a plant he brought from Mexico that also bears his name, the poinsettia.