December 14, 2007

By the turn of the twentieth century, former slave Scott Bond was one of the wealthiest residents of Arkansas. By 1915, Bond owned five cotton gins, a sawmill, and twenty-one farms totaling approximately 5,000 acres, acreage that would more than double before his death in 1933. The farm, shown here, on which the Bond family resided near Madison (St. Francis County) was called “The Cedars.” In 1903, Bond hosted Booker T. Washington at his family farm.