Days in AR History - Starting with O

A supposed fossilized baby, which was later revealed to be a carved stone statue, was dug up in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) by a cohort of Henry Johnson. Johnson was a Scottsville (Pope County) merchant who closely modeled his deception on the nationally famous Cardiff Giant. The 1880 discovery was not revealed as a hoax until 1948. The find was exhibited locally and then around the state, generating money for its creators. Within a year, the carving—known variously as the “Eureka Baby,” the “Petrified Indian Baby,” or as a Hindu idol—had been exhibited in St. Louis, Missouri; Galveston, Texas; and New Orleans, Louisiana. It was also reportedly en route to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC at the time of its disappearance.

The first school for black children in Hope (Hempstead County) opened in a one-room building on South Hazel Street, with Henry Clay Yerger, an African American, as the only teacher. A few years later, Yerger built Shover Street School. Yerger was later instrumental in securing funding for his educational projects from the General Education Board, the Rosenwald Foundation, and Smith-Hughes and Slater Funds; in 1918, he built a dormitory to house girls who wanted to attend high school. A teacher-training summer school that Yerger established in 1895 continued until 1935.

The town of Gillham (Sevier County) was incorporated. Originally founded as Silver City, it was relocated and renamed with the arrival of the railroad in the area. The main highway through Gillham is the concurrent route of U.S. Highways 59 and 71.

Bonnie Parker, of the famous criminal duo Bonnie and Clyde, was born. Arkansas was frequented by Parker, Clyde Barrow, and their associates, collectively known as the Barrow Gang, between 1932 and 1934. The gang’s criminal exploits in Arkansas included murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, robbery, and automobile theft. Western Arkansas was also on the circuit of back roads Barrow used to evade lawmen from other states.

The War Relocation Authority (WRA) initiated a new, comprehensive “leave” or “resettlement” program for the incarcerated Japanese Americans in the ten relocation camps around the country. All classifications of leaves were subject to specific conditions and could be denied or revoked at any time. The WRA’s leave and resettlement program met with limited success; each month usually fewer than several hundred well-qualified and socially acceptable Japanese Americans were able to clear the elaborate process and earn the right to live in relative freedom outside the camps. As with all relocation centers, the two Arkansas camps were mainly able to resettle only the young, college-bound, well-educated, or well-connected Japanese Americans.

Arkansas Travelers general manager Bill Valentine, who was an umpire in the American League from 1963 to 1968, ejected Detroit Tigers pitcher Dave Wickersham, who was going for his twentieth win, after Wickersham violated a rule against players touching umpires. Valentine was also known as one of the few umpires who would call New York Yankee Mickey Mantle out on borderline pitches, and he was one of only two who ever threw Mantle out of a ballgame.

Dandridge McRae was born in Baldwin County, Alabama. McRae was a Searcy (White County) attorney who, during the Civil War, rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Confederate army and led troops in most of the major battles in Arkansas. Following the war, McRae held various state and federal government positions and was active in promoting the state. The town of McRae (White County) is named in his honor.

With its main building complete, St. Johns’ College in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the first college in Arkansas to receive a charter, began its classes with about fifty students. By this time, two other chartered colleges in Arkansas were holding classes: Arkansas College in Fayetteville (Washington County) and Cane Hill College at Cane Hill (Washington County). The Civil War halted the college’s success. The three professors enlisted in the Confederate army, and many of the students followed. The Grand Lodge gave permission to the Confederate forces in Little Rock to use the college as a hospital, and they erected eleven buildings. When Union general Frederick Steele took Little Rock on September 10, 1863, the Union army also used the college and its campus as a hospital.

President Theodore Roosevelt was featured as the key speaker at an early incarnation of the Arkansas State Fair, which was held at Oaklawn Park Racetrack in Hot Springs (Garland County).

The position of Poet Laureate of Arkansas was established by concurrent resolutions of both houses of the General Assembly. In Arkansas, as elsewhere, the title of poet laureate is generally awarded on grounds not restricted to fame or literary eminence; none of the best-known or most distinguished Arkansas poets have received the title. The term “laureate” refers to the ancient custom of crowning a person with a wreath made from leaves of the laurel tree. In antiquity, military heroes, athletic champions, and winners in singing, music, and poetry contests typically received this honor. In modern times, monarchs, governing bodies, or other organizations have named poets laureate, often in recognition of a significant talent but sometimes for political or other reasons.

About 2,000 people celebrated the nation’s first Peace Day with a rally at the State Capitol in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Hundreds more rallied in thirty-six towns across the state. Peace Links Worldwide, an independent organization with the goal of making people aware of the threat of nuclear war, sponsored the Arkansas rallies, as well as rallies in six other states and Washington DC. Betty Bumpers, wife of Arkansas senator Dale Bumpers, founded Peace Links. Betty Bumpers said at the Little Rock rally, “We must find better ways to live together or we will find better ways to die together.”

P. O. Hooper, known as the father of Arkansas medicine, was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). He was one of the founders of the Medical Department of Arkansas Industrial University, now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). Hooper was also a founder and the first president of the Arkansas State Medical Association, a founding board member and director of the Arkansas Lunatic Asylum (renamed the Arkansas State Hospital in 1933), and vice president of the American Medical Association.

Letters by Alden M. Woodruff, son of publisher William E. Woodruff, were published in the Arkansas State Gazette & Democrat, giving details of his experiences searching for gold in the fields of California. These letters and excerpts of articles by F. J. Thibault detailing their experiences helped to provide a record of the history of the many Arkansans who joined the westward movement. The Arkansas Gazette of May 14, 1852, noted that “it is calculated that out of every 100 persons who have gone to California, fifty have been ruined, forty no better than they would have been had they stayed at home, five a little better, and four still better, and one has made a fortune.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held a press conference in New York in order to publicly condemn the events of the Elaine Massacre. Governor Charles Brough, in response to the actions of the NAACP, tried to prevent the NAACP’s magazine Crisis, as well as the black-owned newspaper the Chicago Defender, from being distributed in Arkansas.

Harrison (Boone County) native John Paul Hammerschmidt married Virginia “Ginny” Ann Sharp of Bellefonte (Boone County) following his release from the army and graduation from Oklahoma A&M College. Hammerschmidt was to become the first Republican elected to Congress since Reconstruction days. Before his marriage, Hammerschmidt had received an appointment to the naval academy, requested and was granted a transfer to West Point, attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) during the interim, then decided to forego attendance at West Point to join the Army Air Corps after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Their marriage lasted for fifty-eight years until Virginia’s death in 2006.

Hope (Hempstead County) native Bill Clinton married Hillary Rodham of Park Ridge, Illinois, while they were both teaching law at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). In 1978, Clinton became the second-youngest governor in Arkansas history at the age of thirty-two and was elected president of the United States in 1992 and again in 1996. Nearing the end of her time as the nation’s first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate seat from New York in November 2000. She ran unsuccessfully for U.S. president in 2008 and then became secretary of state in the Obama administration; she also ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016.

Hiram Abiff Whittington married Mary Burnham in Boston, Massachusetts. They later moved back to Hot Springs (Garland County) and lived in the “Magnolia House,” the present-day site of the Majestic Hotel. Whittington is known today for his establishment of Arkansas’s first lending library. He also served as a state representative, and his letters home to Boston are a valuable source of information about early frontier Arkansas.

A murder trial involving Bass Reeves, thought by most to be one of the first African Americans to receive a commission as a U.S. deputy marshal west of the Mississippi River, began in Judge Isaac Parker’s court in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Reeves had been Parker’s deputy marshal. Later that month, after being found not guilty in the death of William Leach, he returned to work as deputy marshal. He had been rumored to be of considerable wealth, but after the trial, most of his life savings had been depleted. Financially, he never recovered from this ordeal.

Futha Cone Magie, who became a pioneer in community journalism in Arkansas and used his journalistic abilities for the betterment of his community, was born in England (Lonoke County). His career in journalism began when he was eight years old and worked as a carrier for the Arkansas Gazette. After military service, he attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He worked for a few years with other publishing entities and then bought a newspaper in Cabot (Lonoke County), a city where he lived the rest of his life. He and his wife subsequently bought and published several local newspapers. In 2002, the Arkansas Press Association gave him the Distinguished Service Award, and he was inducted into UA’s Alumni Society Hall of Honor.

Variety published a review for the film Down in “Arkansaw.” B-movie studio Republic Pictures shot hillbilly situation comedy Down in “Arkansaw” (1938) in California. The only Arkansan in the film was Pinky Tomlin, who was born in Eros (Marion County) but raised in Oklahoma. The reviewer dismissed Nick Grinde’s direction as “slow and unimaginative” and said the Weaver Brothers “aren’t half as funny on the screen as they are on the stage.”

Training officially began at Walnut Ridge Army Flying School with students training on the BT-13. In late September, the Southeast Training Command had clarified confusion over whether the site would become a glider school by announcing that twenty cadets from Camden (Ouachita County) and 102 cadets and three student officers from Decatur, Alabama, would be sent to Walnut Ridge for basic flight training, and the glider program was to be established at Stuttgart. In less than two years, 5,310 students entered training, and 4,641 graduated. Forty-two students and instructors died in training.

William (Bill) Hansen, a longtime political activist and the first director of the Arkansas Project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), married Ruthe Buffington, a black woman from Arkansas, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Because interracial marriage was then illegal in Arkansas, the union caused consternation on the part of many locals. Hansen received a great deal of publicity—much of it negative—from the local media. He was also a prominent target for Arkansas law officials. By his own count, Hansen was arrested forty-five times while working as a civil rights activist. In fact, he recalled being imprisoned in Helena (Phillips County) on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

The Fort Smith Expedition ended. At this point of the Civil War, reliable communication between the garrisons at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Little Rock (Pulaski County) required substantial forces like this expedition. The expedition was ultimately deemed to be a success, as it both accomplished its mission of communicating with Fort Smith and also returned with intelligence gathered along the Arkansas River Valley.

Voters ratified the new Arkansas state constitution and elected a slate of Democrats to office, thus bringing an end to Reconstruction. The new constitution replaced the one ratified in 1868, which, written and promoted primarily by Republicans and carpetbaggers, had allowed Arkansas to rejoin the Union after the Civil War.

Charles M. McDermott died of a spinal disease at his home on Bayou Bartholomew in Dermott (Chicot County), the community that bears his name. McDermott was a doctor, minister, plantation owner, Greek scholar, charter member of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and inventor. His patented inventions include an iron wedge, an iron hoe, a cotton-picking machine, and a “flying machine.” When the Wright brothers made their successful fifty-nine-second flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, two men in the audience are believed to have said, “Why, that’s Charlie McDermott’s machine!” After the Wright brothers’ flight, an article in the Scientific American described McDermott’s machine and accredited his plans to their success.

Devil’s Den State Park in the Boston Mountains of northwest Arkansas was created. It is one of the best-preserved Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) park developments in the United States and contains the largest sandstone crevice cave area in the country. The park is popular for a variety of recreational opportunities and was designated a Natural Area by the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission.

Pioneer cinematographer Freeman Harrison Owens received the patent on the method of drawing and photographing stereoscopic pictures in relief (3-D technology). The patent was later bought by Entertaining Comics (EC) publisher Bill Gaines. Owens is credited with 11,812 inventions, among them the A.C. Nielsen Rating System, a plastic lens for Kodak, and the method of adding synchronized sound to film.

The red-cockaded woodpecker was designated as endangered. With the exception of the recently rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker (in 2004), red-cockaded woodpeckers are the rarest of Arkansas’s nesting woodpeckers. Arkansas’s best opportunity for recovery of the red-cockaded woodpecker involves the USDA Forest Service’s Pine-Bluestem Project on more than 200,000 acres of the Ouachita National Forest in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. While many Arkansas populations have continued to decline, efforts on the Ouachita National Forest have led to a slow recovery. From thirty-two birds in 1990, the population was at least eighty-seven by 2005.

The first town council meeting in Sheridan (Grant County) was held in the courthouse. A brick courthouse built in 1909 at a cost of $55,340 was condemned as unsafe during the 1960s and was replaced in 1964. The courthouse is positioned in the center of Sheridan and serves as a symbol of Grant County. Sheridan, which lies approximately thirty-four miles south of Little Rock (Pulaski County), was named after Union general Philip Sheridan when the town was incorporated twenty-two years after the Civil War. In the twenty-first century, Sheridan is a growing community with expanding industries and has one of the state’s largest school districts.

Lois Lenski, who visited northeast Arkansas after an invitation from schoolchildren who had heard her read one of her books on the radio, was born in Springfield, Ohio. Lenski was certified as a teacher but spent most of her early career illustrating other people’s books until a publisher encouraged her to write her own stories. She visited Mississippi County in the spring and fall of 1947 after the invitation from children in an elementary classroom in Yarbo (Mississippi County), and she inscribed her first book about sharecroppers, Cotton in My Sack, “for my beloved Arkansas cotton children.” She wrote two other books, Houseboat Girl and We Live by the River, about life in that area.

William E. Davis was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Davis distinguished himself as a commercial photographer for forty years and began working as a fine art photographer in 1983. Davis has had aesthetic connections with photographers on the West Coast and has worked almost exclusively in Arkansas. The photographer was honored with a one-person, sixty-seven-image exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center from October 6 through November 26, 2000.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital was fully accredited by the American College of Surgeons, which had withdrawn its approval of the hospital several years earlier. Ruth Olive Beall was superintendent of Arkansas Children’s Hospital and Home from 1934 to 1961. She was largely responsible for the hospital’s survival during the financial difficulties of the Great Depression and for its expansion and improvement in the following years.

Jazz pianist Alphonso “Phonnie” Trent died of a heart attack in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Trent was a renowned jazz pianist and band leader who led the Alphonso Trent Orchestra, a group of young African-American musicians who toured the country, made several recordings, and had a lengthy engagement at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

Lafayette County was formed out of Hempstead County. Its original borders were the Ouachita River on the east, Louisiana to the south, Hempstead County to the north, and Texas to the west. It was named for the Marquis de Lafayette, a French ally of the United States in the Revolutionary War. Lafayette County has always been important to the history of Arkansas, but it was particularly so from its first four decades as a territory through the Civil War. This was partly because one of its residents, James Sevier Conway, was the state’s first governor.

The Arkansas Press Association was established “to promote the interests of the press by securing unity of thought and action in relation to the profession of journalism and the business of publishing, to elevate its tone, purify its expressions, enlarge its usefulness, advance it in wisdom and justice, extend its influence in the work of true civilization, and to cultivate friendly relations and a spirit of fraternal regard among its members.” It is the oldest trade association in Arkansas.

Effiegene Locke married Otis Theodore Wingo, a lawyer and banker who had moved from Tennessee to De Queen (Sevier County). The couple had two children, Janie Blanche Wingo and Otis T. Wingo Jr. The family lived in De Queen until 1912 when Otis Sr. was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District. In 1930, Effiegene Wingo also began her service in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the second of only four women from Arkansas to be elected to the position.

Otis Theodore Wingo and Effiegene Locke were married. Wingo later served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. After he died on October 21, 1930, his wife was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until 1933.

Nationally prominent African-American leader Booker T. Washington delivered the dedication speech for the recently completed Mosaic Templars of America building at the corner of 9th Street and Broadway to a crowd of more than 2,000 citizens—black and white. The Mosaic Templars of America was a hugely successful African-American fraternal organization founded in 1882 by two former slaves. The Mosaic Templars assisted black citizens who were unable to obtain insurance from other established organizations because of the racial policies of the time.

Pollard (Clay County) was incorporated. Pollard is a located in Clay County, a few miles west of Piggott (Clay County) on U.S. Highway 62, in the foothills of Crowley’s Ridge. Pollard has witnessed the emergence and decline of the railroad and the timber industry; its focus in the twenty-first century is on local agriculture.

Robert Stobaugh was born in McGehee (Desha County). Stobaugh was an authority on energy, international business, and corporate governance who served as a professor in the Harvard Business School. His 1979 book, Energy Future: The Report of the Energy Project, led to significant initiatives in energy policy by the Carter administration and became a New York Times bestseller.

Governor Ben Laney proclaimed the first annual Poetry Day in Arkansas in recognition of the tireless efforts of Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni to encourage the appreciation of poetry and poets. Governor Winthrop Rockefeller proclaimed this date to be Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni Day. Marinoni, a native of Italy, was a prolific writer of poetry and short stories and was a fervent promoter of her adopted home state of Arkansas.

Governor Winthrop Rockefeller proclaimed this date, on which Poetry Day is observed, to be Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni Day. Rosa Marinoni had been designated poet laureate of Arkansas in 1953 by act of the General Assembly, and she held that title until her death in 1970. She was a native of Italy who lived in Fayetteville (Washington County) and was married to a university professor. She was a prolific writer and an enthusiastic promoter of the state of Arkansas.

Future eighth governor of Arkansas, Isaac Murphy, was born outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He became nationally famous when, at the Arkansas Secession Convention on May 6, 1861, he not only voted against secession but also resolutely refused to change his vote despite enormous crowd pressure. In 1864, he became the first elected governor of Union-controlled Arkansas.

Explorers William Dunbar and Dr. George Hunter departed from St. Catherine’s Landing on the east bank of the Mississippi River to explore the Ouachita River in the new Louisiana Purchase, of which Arkansas was a part. The reports the explorers sent describing the landscapes and people of the area were the first details of the newly acquired territory to reach Thomas Jefferson.

Conway, the seat of Faulkner County, incorporated. Conway was named for a famous Arkansas family that included the state’s first elected governor, James Sevier Conway. Controversies surrounding the creation of Faulkner County in 1873 and the choice of Conway as its seat continued for many years (partially as a lingering effect of the Brooks-Baxter War). Eventually, the town and Faulkner County became home to large German and Irish populations. A fire in 1878 destroyed a large part of Conway. Involved in rebuilding Conway was George Washington Donaghey, later the twenty-second governor of Arkansas.

According to an article in the Arkansas Democrat, membership in the women’s suffrage movement had increased and gained momentum significantly during the past few years. In October 1914, a state convention in Little Rock (Pulaski County) had officially organized the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The Political Equality League joined with the Federation of Women’s Clubs, and once again, a women’s suffrage amendment was proposed for the Arkansas constitution. This time, the amendment passed. However, four amendments were to be voted on, but according to state law, only three could go before the public. Therefore, the women’s suffrage amendment ultimately failed, just as the previous one had in 1911.

Conscription under the Selective Training and Service Act, preceding America’s entrance into World War II, began. Churches such as the Society of Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and Church of the Brethren, which opposed military service on grounds of religious and personal belief, organized as the National Council of Religious and Conscientious Objectors and began working with the government to oversee placement of conscientious objectors. Camp Magnolia was established in Magnolia (Columbia County) on the site of a former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in June 1941 as one of the centers for people accepted into the Civilian Public Service work. This work was similar to that done by the CCC. Of the 400 men who served there, only nine were from Arkansas.

Sevier County was established. Named after Ambrose H. Sevier, a U.S. senator from Arkansas, its county seat is De Queen. Sevier County is located in southwest Arkansas and borders the state of Oklahoma. The county is located at the northern limits of the Gulf Coastal Plain. Sevier County has four rivers, each of which is impounded by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lake. The Little River forms the southern boundary, while the Saline River borders the east side of the county. The Cossatot River and Rolling Fork River both flow from north to south.

Thad Caraway was born in Spring Hill, Missouri. After his father’s death when Caraway was a young child, his mother struggled to maintain the family. She moved the family to Clay County, Arkansas, when he was twelve. Caraway went on to become an Arkansas prosecuting attorney who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives four times and to the U.S. Senate twice. A progressive champion of the poor, Caraway vigorously challenged corruption while aiding Arkansas during the beginning of the Great Depression. His wife, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, filled his Senate seat after his death on November 6, 1931.

The town of Maynard (Randolph County) was incorporated. Maynard is located at the intersection of State Highways 328 and 115. The town is known for its academic heritage and for preserving the history of the area with the Maynard Pioneer Park and Museum.