Days in AR History - Starting with M

The town of Burrowsville in Searcy County was renamed Marshall after county Unionists pushed to change the town’s name to honor U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall. In January 1864, a Union expedition from Springfield, Missouri, had camped in Burrowsville for two weeks and raided the area, pursuing Confederate partisans. Union forces had burned the courthouse and looted the town. County government ceased to function, and Governor Isaac Murphy appointed the county officers for the next term (1864–1866). After the war, the political situation remained so volatile that U.S. troops had to be stationed in Burrowsville for a few months to keep peace.

Early Benton County settler Sylvanus Blackburn died. His wife had died five days earlier; as the story goes, he directed that her grave be dug but not closed until he was buried beside her. Blackburn is noted for building the first gristmill in Benton County, locating his mill on War Eagle River. After selecting a site, Blackburn built a home, followed by a gristmill, blacksmith shop, carpentry shop, sawmill, and school. As of 2019, Blackburn’s two-story home still stands, while a 1973 reproduction of the mill sits on its original spot. War Eagle Mill is Arkansas’s only remaining working mill. This is also the site of the well-known annual War Eagle Fair, established in 1954 and held each year in October.

President Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority (WRA) for the “relocation, maintenance, and supervision” of the Japanese-American population. The search for sites for America’s first Japanese-American “relocation center,” as they were euphemistically labeled by the WRA, was limited to federally owned lands suitable for housing from five to eight thousand people and located, as the War Department required, “a safe distance from strategic works.” The WRA selected ten sites, with the two Arkansas camps being the easternmost sites.

Malcolm Bowman, who was born in Texas but moved to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) at age ten, died in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Bowman was respected worldwide as an analytical chemist, researcher, and author. He and his associates are credited with devising many techniques and processes as well as developing much of the equipment that became common within the fields of chemistry and scientific research.

Elizabeth Paisley Huckaby died. Huckaby served as an instructor of English for thirty-nine years and was vice principal for girls at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) during the desegregation of the school. Huckaby is also the author of Crisis at Central High: Little Rock, 1957–58. At the time of her retirement in 1969, the Arkansas Gazette said she was “probably as much as any member of the school staff…the object of vilification by the segregationist forces in the 1957 and later school desegregation crises, and conversely a champion of the forces of law and order.”

Writer Alice French was born in Andover, Massachusetts. Writing under the pseudonym Octave Thanet, she was a leading writer of local color stories. Some of her best work is based on the years she spent at her winter home in Clover Bend (Lawrence County). The best of her Arkansas fiction demonstrates her considerable skills: she could render the speech of common people; she had an eye for the colorful, arresting details of the southern landscape; and she presented a view of Arkansas that was popular with the American people. One of her reviewers wrote, “There is but one Arkansas, and Octave Thanet is its prophet.”

The Skirmish at Frog Bayou took place in Crawford County. Colonel Marcus LaRue Harrison of the First Arkansas Cavalry (US) sent regular patrols from Fayetteville (Washington County), and one of these, in mid-March 1863, moved south into Crawford County. There, they discovered a party of the enemy, whom they surprised completely, killing or mortally wounding ten Confederates. The Federals also reported killing three horses and injuring five, as well as capturing camping equipment and arms.

The Arkansas Freeman began printing again after the Reverend Tabbs Gross, the owner and editor, regained the paper from James C. Akers, a news correspondent from the Cincinnati Commercial and former assistant editor of the Colored Citizen. Moving to Little Rock, Akers had literally taken possession of the Freeman, stating that he had purchased the paper from Gross in Memphis. The Arkansas Freeman, which began publication in 1869, was the first newspaper in Arkansas printed by an African American and focusing upon the black community. It was in publication for less than one year, having become symptomatic of the divisions within the Republican Party, particularly where African Americans were involved.

The first recorded mass in Logan County was celebrated, following the arrival of Father Wolfgang Schlumpf, Brother Casper Hildesheim, and Brother Hilarin Benetz from St. Meinrad’s Abbey in southern Indiana. The party had headed for Arkansas in a mule-drawn wagon with the purpose of helping to establish a German Catholic colony in Arkansas. Their destination was St. Bernedict’s Colony near Paris (Logan County), which evolved over the next hundred years to become Subiaco Abbey and Academy.

An election was held in which Russellville (Pope County) beat out all competing cities to be the Pope County seat (it had been located at Dover since 1841), though Atkins finished a close second. Russellville, which was incorporated on June 7, 1870, grew slowly until construction of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad, which had been on hold since the Civil War. After the line came through Russellville in 1873, the city grew rapidly. By 1876, the city had a population of approximately 800 serviced by fifteen stores, two cotton gins, and six doctors. The city growth prompted a debate on moving the county seat to one of the growing business centers adjacent to the new tracks.

Robert McFerrin Sr. was born in Marianna (Lee County) to Melvin McFerrin, a minister, and Mary McKinney McFerrin. He was an African-American baritone opera and concert singer who became the first black male to appear in an opera at the Metropolitan Opera house in New York City. He is best remembered as the father of singer and conductor Bobby McFerrin, with whom he sometimes performed.

Sam Houston was born in Timber Ridge Plantation in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Among other accomplishments and activities, Houston lived in Arkansas Territory among the Cherokee, served as an Indian subagent, and helped many groups of Native Americans resettle in Arkansas and present-day Oklahoma. His wide-ranging activities included being governor of Tennessee, president of the Republic of Texas and, later, governor of the state of Texas. Some historians argue that Houston’s basic attitudes were formulated during his time in Arkansas Territory.

The 100th meridian described in the Adams-Onis Transcontinental Treaty became the western boundary of the new Arkansas Territory. The western half of the original Arkansas Territory was soon to become Indian Territory. An uproar arose in Arkansas in 1820 when a swath of territory between the Arkansas and the Red rivers, said to be populated by 3,000 whites, was assigned by treaty to the Choctaw Indians. Disputes over the western border of Arkansas continued until 1886, when the current boundary was settled.

Maud Crawford, a sixty-five-year-old lawyer with the firm of Gaughan, McClellan and Laney in Camden (Ouachita County), disappeared mysteriously from her home, leaving behind her purse containing cash, and her car, with doors to the house unlocked and all the lights on. The disappearance was first believed to have been a kidnapping by the Mafia to intimidate Senator John L. McClellan, a former partner in the law firm, who at the time was chairman of a high-profile Senate investigation into alleged mob ties to organized labor. That theory was eventually abandoned. Later investigation seemed to point toward Crawford’s research into a fraudulent land deed case, but the matter of her disappearance was never solved, and her body was never found.

Mid-South Community College (MSCC) opened as Mid-South Vocational Technical School (MSVTS) with two buildings housing nine classrooms. MSCC, located in West Memphis (Crittenden County), has become a two-year public institution serving Crittenden County and the surrounding area. MSCC focuses upon its students as customers, offering programs and services that enable them to get better jobs and to become better citizens, thus developing the workforce necessary to attract new business and industry to the east Arkansas Delta area.

Lonnie Glosson died in Searcy (White County), weeks after his ninety-third birthday. Glosson popularized the harmonica nationwide and had a hand in several hit songs during a time when radio stations employed harmonica orchestras. After enjoying a radio career playing the harmonica, Glosson delved more into gospel as the years wore on, self-issuing songs such as “For Christmas Give Jesus Your Soul.” Nicknamed the “Talking Harmonica Man,” Glosson toured mainly in schools and continued performing into his nineties.

The Hardy Cemetery Historic Section was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Much of the significance of the cemetery lies in the variety of funerary architecture among the different headstones throughout the property. Several graves are marked with sculpted stones, some graves are encircled with rocks, and many stones bear Masonic or Eastern Star symbols. Even more significant is the connection to the founders of Hardy and citizens who contributed to the growth of the town. At least eleven of the city founders and descendants of at least eighteen city founders are buried in the cemetery.

Hiram Heartsill Ragon was born in Dublin (Johnson County). Ragon was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Fifth District of Arkansas in the Sixty-Eighth through the Seventy-Third Congresses, serving from 1923 to 1933. He also served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas from May 1933 until September 1940.

Architect George Francis Trapp was born in Chicago, Illinois. His family moved to Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1914, and his interest in architecture might have been inspired by some of the new tall buildings in Little Rock, such as the seven-story, steel-framed Southern Trust Building, now known as Pyramid Place, and the eleven-story State Bank Building, now known as the Boyle Building—both of which had been designed by George R. Mann. Two qualities consistent throughout Trapp’s career were sensitivity to siting (judging how a building’s design and material related to the site) and boldness in setting shapes against each other.

African-American political leader and businessman Green Walter Thompson died. He was returning home at around midnight from a meeting when an assailant killed him with an ax as he stabled his horses. Although family members initially were charged, no one was convicted. Thompson had won his first elective office while still in his twenties. In 1875, he was elected the Sixth Ward alderman on the Little Rock City Council. He served for eighteen years, a record tenure for African Americans that was not surpassed for almost a century. But as the Gilded Age gave way to the more strident 1890s, Thompson and other black politicians battled discrimination, segregation, and disfranchisement. The warm relationship between black citizens and the Republican Party slowly degenerated.

“Sister Rosetta” Tharpe was born in Cotton Plant (Woodruff County). Tharpe was one of gospel music’s first superstars, the first gospel performer to record for a major record label (Decca), and an early crossover from gospel to secular music. Tharpe has been cited as an influence by numerous musicians, including Bob Dylan, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Arkansan Johnny Cash.

Cleveland County observed the American bicentennial by inviting its famous native son Johnny Cash, who was born near Kingsland, to return for a concert. Cash and his wife, June, appeared first at Kingsland, then boarded a Cotton Belt special passenger train for Rison (Cleveland County), where he appeared in a parade and performed a free concert at the football field for a crowd estimated at 12,000. On March 31, 1991, Cash returned to Kingsland for the dedication of the new post office named in his honor.

Fred Darragh died at the age of eighty-six. Darragh was a Little Rock (Pulaski County) businessman known for his philanthropic support of Arkansas’s social justice organizations, libraries, and liberal political causes, along with his efforts to educate Arkansans about foreign countries and cultures. The Central Arkansas Library System’s Darragh Center for Intellectual Freedom and an annual lecture series at the library honor his decades of support.

An argument between a white man and a black man over a game of chance at the river crossing of St. Charles (Arkansas County) escalated to blows and led to the murder of thirteen black males over the course of four days, making the incident possibly one of the deadliest lynchings in American history. In an effort to find the black man (who had fled after having been arrested for assault and informed that he was about to be hanged), a succession of white mobs from nearby communities terrorized the black population of St. Charles. The murderers were never identified in public reports or eyewitness accounts, and the scant surviving evidence in newspapers and manuscripts lists only the victims, not the killers or their motives.

Irene Gaston Samuel was born in Van Buren (Crawford County). Samuel was the executive secretary of the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC), which arose in the fall of 1958 when Little Rock (Pulaski County) voted to close all of the city’s high schools rather than desegregate them. Samuel served as the organization’s executive secretary until it disbanded in 1963.

Maurice Neal “Nick” McDonald was born in Camden (Ouachita County). He was a patrolman for the Dallas Police Department and is most known for arresting Lee Harvey Oswald shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He later wrote about his experience in a short book titled, Oswald and I.

Baseball player Clyde Henry “Pea Ridge” Day took his own life. The child of a Pea Ridge (Benton County) farm family, Day was known as the “hog-calling pitcher” in a career spanning the 1920s and early 1930s. During his career, Day transported his considerable talents, his hometown’s name, and a slice of the lively culture of the Arkansas hills onto the national scene. Day’s fun-loving showmanship and competitive spirit brought rare publicity to his hometown and home state. Day’s funeral, held at the newly built First Baptist Church of Pea Ridge, was attended by more than 500 people. His gravestone bears the epitaph, “An Immortal in Baseball.”

John Steven (Steve) Clark was born in Leachville (Mississippi County). Clark was the longest-serving attorney general in Arkansas history. After eleven years as attorney general, Clark announced in January 1990 that he would run for the Democratic nomination for governor. A few days later, the Arkansas Gazette reported that his office had spent a suspicious $115,729 total on travel and meals, more than any of the other six constitutional officers, and that his vouchers listed many dinner guests who said they had not been his guests. In February, Clark withdrew from the governor’s race (Governor Bill Clinton would be re-elected). He was convicted of fraud by deception and resigned as attorney general.

Life magazine carried an article with accompanying photographs dealing with the conditions of black education in West Memphis (Crittenden County), which spent an average of $144.51 for each white child’s education and $19.51 for the education of each black child. Photographs revealed the crowded conditions in the black school, which had been partially destroyed by fire. Some 310 students and their five teachers were squeezed into five rooms of the gutted building, and 370 more were packed into a one-room church. On September 27, 1949, a bond issue for a new black school was defeated. Meanwhile, a new $300,000 facility for 900 white children had just opened. Not until 1971 did the first black students graduate from Marion High School.

Camp Chaffee was re-designated as Fort Chaffee; the army generally refers to something as a fort when it is a more permanent installation than a camp. In 1958, Fort Chaffee was home to its most famous occupant, Elvis Presley. Presley received his first military haircut in Building 803. Fort Chaffee, just outside of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Barling (Sebastian County) on Arkansas Highway 22, has served the United States as an army training camp, a prisoner-of-war camp, and a refugee camp. Currently, 66,000 acres are used by the Arkansas National Guard as a training facility, with the Arkansas Air National Guard using the fort’s Razorback Range for target practice.

Drew County native Charlie May Simon, a renowned Arkansas author, died. Known primarily for her children’s literature, with just under thirty books and numerous short stories to her credit, Simon had a long career writing for adults as well. She is also known as the wife of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet John Gould Fletcher. Her work in the field of children’s literature has been honored in Arkansas since 1971 by the annual presentation of the Charlie May Simon Book Award.

Oscar Fendler was born in Blytheville (Mississippi County). Fendler was a prominent Arkansas lawyer who, during his nearly seven decades practicing law in Blytheville, served as a leader of the state bar and worked to improve the administration of justice in Arkansas. He served as president of the Arkansas Bar Association from 1962 to 1963. Fendler was also dedicated to penal reform. He persuaded the U.S. District Court to order the closures of the county penal farms in Mississippi County and Phillips County, and Governor Winthrop Rockefeller appointed Fendler to the Arkansas Board of Pardons and Appeals, on which he served for three years.

Grider Army Air Field opened. Named posthumously in honor of World War I flying ace John McGavock Grider of Osceola (Mississippi County), Grider Field was a World War II Army Air Corps training facility located in Jefferson County. Today, the field survives as southeast Arkansas’s first modern municipal airport, encompassing 850 acres. It is located nearly six miles southeast of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), off Highway 65 South and north of U.S. Highway 425.

Charline Woodford Beasley Person died in Texarkana (Miller County). Person ran a 5,000-acre cotton plantation in Miller County, Arkansas, after the death of her husband. Person was an active community and church leader, helping build the community church in Garland (Miller County) and steering her hometown through the Great Depression. She was also the only woman chosen to represent Arkansas at the St. Louis Exposition of 1926.

The land for Daisy State Park, consisting of 272 acres situated on the northern shoreline of 7,000-acre Lake Greeson in southwest Arkansas, was acquired by the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Former state representative Pete Austin, a lifetime resident of Pike County, was a leading advocate for the creation of the park. In the early 1950s, the Corps of Engineers built a small, primitive campsite there before the site was designated a state park. The facilities have grown through the years. The clear water and Ouachita Mountains scenery make the park a favorite of campers seeking water sports and fishing. Daisy is the eighth state park established in Arkansas.

The “Mother of Father’s Day,” Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, died. Sonora Smart was born in 1882 in Jenny Lind (Sebastian County), the oldest of six children and the only girl. When Smart was five, her family left Arkansas and settled in Spokane, Washington, where she lived for the rest of her life. In 1898, her mother died in childbirth, and Smart helped her father raise her younger brothers. She began trying to make Father’s Day an officially recognized holiday in 1909, and the first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane on June 19, 1910, fourteen days after Dodd’s father’s birthday. In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday to be observed annually the third Sunday of June.

Roosevelt Levander Thompson, a Little Rock (Pulaski County) native who is recognized as one of the most gifted people to have attended Yale University, died at 5:25 a.m. while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike during the last semester of his senior year at Yale. Newsweek later ran a one-page obituary about Thompson titled, “Rosey: He Was the Best of Us.” The auditorium of Little Rock Central High School is now named after Thompson, and a scholarship in Thompson’s name is awarded to Central students every year. A branch of the Central Arkansas Library System named after Thompson opened at 38 Rahling Circle in west Little Rock on September 25, 2004.

The tenth library in the Central Arkansas Library System was dedicated in honor of Sue Cowan Williams, who represented African-American teachers in the Little Rock School District as the plaintiff in the 1942 case challenging the rate of salaries allotted to teachers in the district based solely on skin color. The library appropriately serves the community near the historic Dunbar High School building, where Williams taught.

The German prisoner-of-war (POW) camp in Lake Village (Chicot County) closed. At its height, the camp housed more than 300 German enlisted men, most of whom were considered Nazi sympathizers. Lake Village is located in the extreme southeastern part of the state. While Lake Village is the smallest incorporated town, by square miles, in Chicot County, it has served as the county seat since 1857. The hub of commercial activity for the county, Lake Village prides itself on its rich agricultural background.

Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) held its groundbreaking. The chapel in the woods is forty-eight feet tall and contains over 6,000 square feet of glass. Designed by famed Arkansas architect Fay Jones, Thorncrown Chapel is one of the most popular wedding sites in the state.

Simmons First National Bank in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) made banking history when a Simmons customer withdrew $285 from an automatic teller machine (ATM) in Sydney, Australia, in the world’s first intercontinental transaction made via an ATM. The bank, which was opened in 1903 by Dr. John Franklin Simmons, had (by 2007) paid dividends for ninety-nine consecutive years. The bank was the first in Arkansas to offer its customers the Bank of America credit card (now known as VISA) and has assets of over $2.7 billion.

Evening Shade, a half-hour television situation comedy series on CBS about a contemporary Arkansas town, aired its last episode. Shown from 1990 to 1994, it was produced by Arkansan Harry Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. It was set in the rural town of Evening Shade (Sharp County) and was the first network television series set in Arkansas. The popular program known for small-town Southern charm ran for ninety-eight episodes.

Circuit Judge David Bogard ruled that Arkansas’s sodomy law violated state and federal constitutional protections in the case of Jegley v. Picado. The ruling would be appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling, thus removing a legal prohibition against homosexual relationships.

Conservationist Carl Glenn Hunter died; he is buried in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Hunter achieved prominence in two branches of Arkansas’s outdoors—its fauna and its flora. Activities with wildflowers made him a household name in Arkansas and beyond after his retirement from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) as a wildlife biologist. At the AGFC, he became a key figure in the Arkansas deer restoration program, and he compiled a major wildlife inventory, culminating in the 1951 publication of A Survey of Arkansas Game. Hunter also studied and photographed Arkansas wildflowers, and this was the foundation of his acclaimed 1984 book, Wildflowers of Arkansas. He followed it with Trees, Shrubs and Vines of Arkansas in 1989.

Clyde Barrow, of the famous criminal duo Bonnie and Clyde, was born. Arkansas was frequented by Barrow, Bonnie Parker, 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.

Elvis Presley arrived at Fort Chaffee on a chartered bus from Tennessee with twenty-one other men to be inducted into the U.S. Army. He endured two days of army tests and processing (including the regulation haircut) with a polite and genial attitude. The entertainer, who made a million dollars a year, was also given the usual advance on his first month’s army pay: $7.00. Fan mail and telegrams poured into Fort Chaffee, including a telegram from the governor of Tennessee. Presley then went on to basic training in Fort Hood, Texas.

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was recorded in Poinsett County. This earthquake was felt over an area of 174,000 square miles. Damage included power outages and downed telephone lines in Jonesboro (Craighead County), broken windows in Paragould (Greene County), cracked plaster in Marked Tree (Poinsett County), and roof damage and fallen ceiling tile in Decatur (Benton County). Although significant damage has not been reported in the area in recent years, the New Madrid seismic zone is potentially capable of generating powerful earthquakes.

The national exhibit A Personal Statement: Arkansas Women Artists opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibit, which lasted until June 14, 1992, and featured ten Arkansas artists, was the work of the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The committee is composed of a group of well-connected Arkansas women who work to support female Arkansas artists, focusing upon primarily visual art done by noted female artists in the state, though it also sponsors writers, poets, and songwriters.

Two students from Westside Middle School, located approximately two miles west of Jonesboro (Craighead County), carried out an armed ambush on teachers and students, resulting in five dead and ten others injured. The shooters, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson, were arrested and prosecuted for the crime. The incident was one of two school shootings in Arkansas and one of several school shootings across the nation that adjusted school administrators’ and law enforcement officers’ concepts of school security and response plans for violent incidents at schools.

John Tomas “Jack” Lavey died. Lavey was one of a handful of Arkansas lawyers who made equality claims for African Americans in courts and defended civil rights activists who were jailed during the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His cases in federal courts established the right of African Americans and women to equal pay and promotions in public and private workplaces. Lavey represented labor unions in Arkansas throughout his career in the state, and he was considered by the Bill Clinton administration for appointment to the National Labor Relations Board.