Days in AR History - Starting with D

The Skirmish at Benton took place. After the fall of Little Rock (Pulaski County) in September 1863, Federal forces established defensive lines around the capital city but sent patrols and forage trains into nearby communities to gather both information and supplies. One city temporarily occupied by the Union troops was Benton (Saline County). A small engagement, the inconsequential Skirmish at Benton was a Confederate attack on one such patrol.

Tom P. Morgan was born in East Lyme, Connecticut. In his youth, he spent much of his time in the local newspaper office. He also joined a traveling dramatic company and a circus. These varied life experiences were the basis of much of his writing. By 1887, Morgan was a published author. After living in Kansas, he moved to Rogers (Benton County) in 1890. To many in Rogers, he was best known as a successful businessman who operated a downtown newsstand and bookstore. But Morgan was a nationally known writer whose work appeared in major publications such as Life and the Saturday Evening Post. Morgan’s gravestone in the Rogers Cemetery says simply, “Writer, Humorist, Philosopher.”

Swiss-German Catholic priest and missionary Eugene Weibel, who had arrived at St. Benedict’s in Logan County in February 1879 after immigrating to the United States and living in Indiana, stepped off the train in Pocahontas (Randolph County) to begin almost thirty years of ministry in northeast Arkansas. Two months before, Arkansas’s Catholic bishop Edward M. Fitzgerald had asked him to undertake this mission. He was now no longer a monk in the Benedictine Order, as he had been at his parish church in Eschenbach, Canton Lucerne, Switzerland, but a priest serving the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock.

A fire destroyed the local electrical plant in Sulphur Springs (Benton County). The Sulphur Springs Record was forced to relocate to nearby Gravette (Benton County) during the outage in order to publish. Only in 1914 did construction of a new electrical plant begin, but the damage was already done. Though hotels had their own generators, the Kansas City Southern Railway likely dropped Sulphur Springs as an excursion point during the outage, especially as many local sources of entertainment, such as the merry-go-round at the amusement park, were run on electricity. In 1915, electrical service resumed.

A bipartisan coalition in Congress—put together by Democratic senator from Arkansas Bill Fulbright and others—condemned Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy. Fulbright was the only senator to vote against appropriations for McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Investigative Subcommittee. During Richard Nixon’s tenure in office, Fulbright led the way in defeating the nomination of G. Harold Carswell, an outspoken opponent of the civil rights movement. He also later combated the John Birch Society, the Christian Crusade, H. L. Hunt, Strom Thurmond, and the other organizations and individuals that made up the radical right.

Bernell “Fatman” Austin, creator of the fried dill pickle, sold his drive-in, the Loner, and retired from the restaurant business. The Loner had been a popular place for travelers, especially fans of the Arkansas Razorbacks traveling back and forth to home games in Fayetteville (Washington County).

The town of Ola (Yell County) underwent a name change. Originally called Red Lick, the area became known as Petit Jean in 1866, after the nearby river. In 1875, the name Petit Jean was discontinued until it was officially changed to Ola. The area that became Ola was part of the Ward Township, Section 3, Township 4 North, Range 21 West. The 1850 Census shows twenty-two families residing within the Ward Township and includes a store and scattered outlying homesteads. Postal service was established in 1848. Early settlers came from North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, attracted to the area by its cheap land and ample commercial possibilities.

William Ferguson Slemons died. Slemons was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Second District of Arkansas in the Forty-Fourth through the Forty-Sixth U.S. Congresses, serving from 1875 to 1881.

Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony premiered William Grant Still’s Symphony in G Minor. Still grew up in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and achieved national and international acclaim as a composer of symphonic and popular music. As an African American, he broke race barriers and opened opportunities for other minorities. He was a strong advocate for the performance of works by American composers.

The Daisy Manufacturing Company symbolically broke ground in Rogers (Benton County) for construction of a plant to produce Daisy BB guns and other models of air guns, after having operated facilities in Plymouth, Michigan, since 1895. Production of steel air guns evolved from a watchmaker’s idea that windmills and air guns could be made of steel instead of wood. Originally, the air guns were used as premiums given to every farmer who bought a steel windmill, but the air guns soon took over the company’s entire production and the company name was changed from Plymouth Windmill Company to Daisy Manufacturing Company.

George Newbern, known for his roles in the television show Designing Women and movies such as Father of the Bride, was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Wilson Kimbrough, who made distinctive contributions to society through his efforts to professionalize law enforcement in Arkansas, was killed in an automobile accident on U.S. 412 east of Springdale (Washington County). He is considered the father of police and criminal psychology in Arkansas and one of the founders of police and criminal psychology in the United States. Throughout his professional career, he actively supported many mental health initiatives in northwest Arkansas and, as a Washington County Quorum Court member, led in the development of prototype job evaluation and salary administration programs.

Ronald Davies, the federal judge who presided over pivotal decisions in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, was born in Crookston, Minnesota. He completed elementary school and high school in Grand Forks, North Dakota, graduated from the University of North Dakota, and received his law degree from Georgetown University in Washington DC. Davies was first assigned to temporary duty to help ease the case load in Judge John E. Miller’s court, but his rulings had a crucial effect on the handling of the conflict between segregationist and integrationist factions in the Little Rock case.

The Polk County Possum Club got its start when attorney J. I. Alley wrote a letter to Mena (Polk County) mayor John H. Hamilton that read, in part: “The undersigned has recently seen and heard of much of your boastful conduct and self praise with reference to possum hunting…Therefore believing that others should share at least a part of those honors, I challenge you to a single or a series of possum hunts most suitable to yourself and those with whom you train.” The Polk County Possum Club (PCPC) henceforth hosted yearly banquets of opossum meat and side dishes until 1947 (although sporadically during World War II—during which time the county became dry), though it was active again for five years in the 1990s.

John Bush, who was born into slavery and rose to become founder of the hugely successful and internationally recognized Mosaic Templars of America fraternal organization, died. During his lifetime, Bush was the first black person to be recommended for chief clerkship of the Railway Mail Service’s postal department. He was later appointed by President William McKinley as receiver of the United States Land Office and was reappointed for four additional terms by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. At the time of his death, he was one of the wealthiest black men in Arkansas.

Governor Harvey Parnell issued a public denouncement of the “yellow” journalism being practiced in the matter of the alleged murder of Connie Franklin. The cost of the trial for the supposed murder was more than $8,000, breaking the already financially burdened Stone County. The alleged murder of Connie Franklin in 1929 scandalized the state and served to reinforce negative stereotypes about Arkansas. The uproar surrounding the apparent murder only increased with the reappearance of the “victim,” alive and well, shortly before the trial of his alleged murderers.

Helen Martin King died in Fayetteville (Washington County); she is buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in Batesville (Independence County). During her lifetime, she revived the ancient art of rug hooking and is credited with thousands of original designs. She taught classes on the subject at colleges, adult education programs, and neighborhood gatherings. She was covered in Life and National Geographic magazines and served as a consultant with the Putnam Dye Company and the Dorr Mills of New England.

Charlotte Tillar Schexnayder died. Schexnayder was a journalist and state politician as well as co-owner of the Dumas Clarion newspaper in Dumas (Desha County). She was also the first female president of the Dumas Chamber of Commerce and the president of several associations for professional journalists, including the Arkansas Press Women, the Arkansas Press Association, the National Federation of Press Women, and the National Newspaper Association.

Albert Homer Purdue, a renowned geologist who had been a professor of geology at Arkansas Industrial University (now the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville) and had been ex-officio state geologist, died in Tennessee of uremic poisoning, which resulted from complication from surgery undergone to correct an intestinal condition that had bothered him for years. As a student at Purdue University, Purdue had run a cleaning business with Herbert Clark Hoover, who later became president of the United States.

Will Kruse died. Kruse had sought gold ore deposits in Rogers (Benton County) on his father’s eighty-acre farm, a hunt triggered neither by scientific nor geological verification but rather inspired by psychic revelations he combined with automatic writings pointing him to a precise site where he believed wholeheartedly that he would find enough gold to end world misery. To this end, he established Kruse Gold Mines, which proved an abysmal failure. Kruse was working with the laboratories of the Clark Mining Company of Butte, Montana, “on a process for handling the mineral found on his farm” when he died. His death finally ended the intervals of on-and-off work at the mines, which for all practical purposes had stalled around 1912.

The suicide of Ad Bertig, a Paragould (Greene County) man who was involved in several businesses in the area and who had suffered heavy operational losses, disturbed the serenity of local people and threatened to start a run on local banks. Although none of the local banks failed, the local economy was devastated for over a decade after the depression of the late 1920s and following drought, dust storms, floods in 1935 and 1937, and a second depression in 1937. The city made a great financial recovery after World War II when the Chamber of Commerce was successful in attracting a number of large industries.

Paul Douglas, a Paragould (Greene County) native who became an air force “ace,” received his wings and commission as a second lieutenant, just five days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Douglas retired as a brigadier general on February 1, 1970, having flown four different airplane types over the course of his career. Earning over sixty decorations, Douglas was one of the most decorated flyers in air force history.

Noted author Dee Brown died at the age of ninety-four at his home in Little Rock (Pulaski County). He was born in Louisiana, but moved to Arkansas around age five; he spent the last decades of his life in Little Rock. Author of the bestselling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Brown was responsible in part for a changing view of the place of Native Americans in history. A memorial service was held at the Main Library of the Central Arkansas Library System, which has a branch library in Little Rock named for Brown. His remains are interred in Urbana, Illinois.

The legislature created a new Searcy County from the southern part of Marion County. The original Searcy County had been established in 1835, but enough people had settled in north-central Arkansas to lead to a petition for a separate county. The act made the residence of James Eagan the temporary county seat and provided for election of commissioners to locate a seat of justice. The commissioners chose a place on Bear Creek as the county seat and named it Lebanon; a post office was established there on March 7, 1840. Between 1840 and 1850, post offices were opened in Wiley’s Cove, Locust Grove, and Point Peter.

Alexander McDonald died. McDonald, who was born near Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, was one of Arkansas’s Republican senators during Reconstruction. While McDonald played a role in the return of the state to its place in the Union, his roles as banker and railroad executive were possibly more important to the state than his brief political career.

The Arkansas Gazette reported that the crowds were so large that the funeral home placed the body of conman, bank robber, and killer Tom Slaughter outside and allowed the curious to view him; the crowd at the funeral was estimated at more than 5,000. Dead before his twenty-fifth birthday, Louisiana native Slaughter was a violent, arrogant, and handsome murderer. When he was shot and killed during an attempted escape from prison on December 9, 1921, in Benton (Saline County), Slaughter had been given the death sentence for murder.

Wiley Branton was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Branton was a civil rights leader in Arkansas who helped desegregate the University of Arkansas School of Law and later filed suit against the Little Rock School Board in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court as Cooper v. Aaron. His work to end legal segregation and inequality in Arkansas and the nation was well known in his time.

The commencement ceremony for the first graduating class of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock (Pulaski County) was held. The school is the only school in the United States to offer a master’s degree in public service to prepare graduates for careers with nonprofit, governmental, volunteer, or private-sector work. The school is located in the former Choctaw Station of the Rock Island Railroad and is part of the Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock. Speaking at the graduation exercises, President Clinton expressed his belief that the noble calling of public service makes a significant difference to the common good.

The academy started by Robert Graham in 1850 was chartered as Arkansas College of Fayetteville (Washington County). The first bachelor’s degrees in the state were granted by the college, and the college was given the power to confer doctoral degrees. In the years leading to the Civil War, Fayetteville and the county had gained a reputation as the state’s cultural and educational center, with several active academies and seminaries.

The Arkansas legislature granted Arkansas College in Fayetteville (Washington County) the state’s first charter to a degree-granting institution. The college soon had an enrollment of 200. The Restoration Movement has deep roots in Christian education, since individuals had to read and comprehend the Bible for themselves. Second Great Awakening leader Alexander Campbell founded Bethany College (a Christian academy and college) in 1840, in Bethany, Virginia, and began to produce educated and evangelically minded graduates, such as Robert Graham, founder of Arkansas College. Although the college came to an end, the pride that Fayetteville residents felt for Arkansas College was a catalyst when the city successfully bid to be the site of the state’s first public institution of higher learning, Arkansas Industrial University, later renamed the University of Arkansas (UA).

Patrick Cleburne, the highest-ranking Irish-born officer in American military history, was promoted to major general. Cleburne entered the Civil War as commander of the Yell Rifles, which became part of the First Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Cleburne County was named for General Cleburne, who died in the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, in 1864. He was memorialized at the request of Cleburne County men who fought under his leadership.

The name of present-day Logan County was changed from Sarber County, with Paris named as the official county seat (the present-day county has two seats: Paris and Booneville). The legislature had been asked to change the name to Logan County in honor of James Logan, an early settler. Other incorporated towns in the county are Magazine, Blue Mountain, Caulksville, Ratcliff, Subiaco, Scranton, and Morrison Bluff. Although Logan County was not created until 1871, the area that is now Logan County has had a significant impact on the development of western Arkansas dating from territorial days. Some of the oldest settlements in western Arkansas were located there.

The Metropolitan Hotel, the only upscale hotel in Little Rock (Pulaski County), burned, paving the way for the opening of the Capital Hotel in January 1877. The manager of the Metropolitan, Colonel A. G. DeShon, along with Major John Adams, was instrumental in leasing the Denckla Block as a home for the new hotel, persuading its agents at the time of the need for a grand hotel in the capital city. The Capital Hotel, with a grand interior created to match its grand exterior, hosted many political and historic personages, including President Ulysses S. Grant. In fact, legend says that the Capital’s unusually large elevator was built to allow Grant to take his horse to his hotel room.

Jay Woodson Dickey Jr. was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Dickey was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Fourth District of Arkansas in the 103rd through the 106th Congresses, serving from 1993 to 2001.

The town of McDougal (Clay County) was incorporated. Established as a railroad depot early in the twentieth century, McDougal has survived into the twenty-first century while similar railroad towns have disappeared.

The Missouri territorial legislature created three counties from Arkansas County—Hempstead, Clark, and Pulaski. Hempstead County, located in the southwest corner of the state, was organized in 1819 when Congress established Arkansas Territory. The county was named for Edward Hempstead, the first delegate to Congress from Missouri Territory. It has been the home of four Arkansas governors: Augustus Hill Garland, Daniel Webster Jones, William Jefferson Clinton (later a U.S. president), and Michael Dale Huckabee.

The Lavaca Berry Growers Association met at the Lavaca School cafeteria to sell its berry shed and property. The members also decided that the sale’s profits would be given to the members of the association who had provided the money to purchase the land on which the original berry shed was located. The Lavacaberry is a hybrid that takes its name from the town of Lavaca (Sebastian County), where it was planted extensively in the 1940s. The introduction of the berry to the town helped reinvigorate the local economy as the Depression’s effects lingered. In the late 1950s, larger growers from out of state contracted to sell berries to local stores, driving the market down and making the berries unprofitable.

Wiley Branton died of a heart attack. Branton was a civil rights leader in Arkansas who helped desegregate the University of Arkansas School of Law and later filed suit against the Little Rock School Board. His work to end legal segregation and inequality in Arkansas and the nation was well known. Branton became dean of Howard University Law School during a troubled period in the school’s existence and was proud of his work in restoring some of its historical prominence as a creator of black civil rights lawyers. As a member of a Chicago law firm in the early 1980s, he resisted Senator Jesse Helms’s efforts to obtain access to the FBI’s files on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A fifteen-year-old student in Stamps (Lafayette County) conducted an ambush-style attack on a school, firing upon students from a nearby wooded area. This attack perhaps inspired two students from Westside Middle School near Jonesboro (Craighead County) in their armed ambush on teachers and students on March 24, 1998, which resulted in five dead and ten others injured. The shooters, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson, were arrested and prosecuted for the crime. It is unknown whether Johnson or Golden had any knowledge of the details of the attack in Stamps, but the similarity and timing is remarkable.

Anthonyville (Crittenden County) was incorporated. Anthonyville is a town located on State Highway 147 in southern Crittenden County. The town has never had a post office, a school, or a railroad depot; it exists in the twenty-first century largely as a bedroom community for the greater Memphis, Tennessee, area. The town is named for Solon Anthony and his relatives.

Political cartoonist George Fisher, a native of Searcy (White County) died at his home in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Fisher used visual metaphors and themes to define Arkansas politics for a generation. Bill Clinton was shown riding a tricycle, referring to his being elected the nation’s youngest governor, and Governor Frank White was depicted munching a banana, a reference to White’s support of the 1981 creation science bill, Act 590.

The natural disaster that became known as the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812 began. Centered near New Madrid, Missouri, the earthquake sent shocks for hundreds of miles throughout northeast Arkansas, western Tennessee, and southeast Missouri. An even larger disturbance occurred on January 23, with aftershocks lasting until February 4. Another violent quake occurred on February 7. Arkansas suffered the greatest amount of damage, but loss of life was minimal because the area affected was sparsely populated.

Residents living in northeastern Arkansas were jolted awake at 2:15 a.m. by a major earthquake. The shaking was felt as far away as New England and Canada. Scientists estimate that this event measured 7.0 to 8.0 in magnitude. This marked the first in a series of powerful earthquakes to shake the region over a three-month period.

Alice Luberter Walker Preston was born in Paraloma (Howard County). Preston was an African-American schoolteacher who was instrumental in the peaceful integration of Murfreesboro (Pike County) city schools in 1965. Over her lifetime, she left an enduring legacy in the field of education in Arkansas. Preston was named one of the Horizon 100 Arkansas Women of Achievement in 1980 and Citizen of the Decade by the Murfreesboro Chamber of Commerce in 1988. She was presented the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education Distinguished Alumni of the Year Citation in 1992.

Frank Tinker—who had graduated from Annapolis but was court-martialed and stripped of his commission as a naval officer following quarrels in Long Beach, California—left for Spain to join Republican forces fighting against the Nationalist forces led by Francisco Franco. He became distinguished as the top American ace as a mercenary pilot, being given credit for eight hits. His service in Spain was contrary to the United States’ non-interventionist policy, and he adopted the alias of Francisco Gomez Trejo for the time he served there. He returned to the United States in August 1937.

NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries television show about the Gurdon Light aired. The staff of the show had traveled to Gurdon (Clark County) a few weeks before to document the phenomenon of the Gurdon Light. Many theories exist to explain this light, which appears along a stretch of railroad tracks outside of town, including a theory that connects the light to the 1931 murder of railroad worker William McClain.

Columbia County was created from portions of Lafayette, Hempstead, Ouachita, and Union counties. The county seat, Magnolia, was incorporated in 1855. The early residents depended on an agricultural economy with cotton, and to a lesser extent corn, as a cash crop. Some settlers brought slaves. Early tax records indicate that in 1854, Columbia County had 1,675 slaves in a total population of almost 6,000. The first formal federal census of the county in 1860 showed a population of 12,449, of whom 3,599 were slaves. About 1,000 farms were in operation at that time.

Governor George Washington Donaghey pardoned 360 prisoners, thus leading to the end of the convict-lease system, a system that he believed forced convicts to work under inhumane and unhealthy conditions. Donaghey reasoned that by pardoning all surplus convicts not needed to cultivate the state farm, there would be no convicts available for lease. Within two months of Donaghey’s action, the Arkansas legislature abolished convict leasing.

Margarete Neel, who became the symbol of the International Red Cross after World War II, was born in Minturn (Lawrence County). Neel worked for the Red Cross in the Pacific Theater and the China-Burma-India Theater. While at the 109th Station Hospital in Australia, she was photographed guiding the wheelchair of the wounded Private Gordon Pyle. This photograph was reproduced as a poster for the organization’s post-war fundraising activities.

In a precursor to Harvey Couch’s statewide power company, Malvern (Hot Spring County) and Arkadelphia (Clark County) were linked together by a twenty-two-mile, 22,000-volt electric transmission line. The power plant in Malvern could now power both cities twenty-four hours a day. Residents cheered as lights came on in both cities simultaneously. Couch called his company, which provided the new service, the Arkansas Power Company (it would later become Arkansas Power and Light—AP&L). Couch argued that interconnected power plants could offer continuous service to customers in the event of a problem with one individual power source. He also thought an interconnected power system would help attract more industry to Arkansas.