Days in AR History - Starting with O

Kentucky native James David Walker fell down the stairs in the building where his law practice was located, fracturing his skull; he died a few hours later. Walker served as a U.S. senator from Arkansas from 1879 to 1885. Before that, he served as a judge and as a colonel in the Confederate army. Local historian William Campbell later described him as “a man of strong convictions, sturdy honesty, high principles, and the recognized leader of the bar,” adding that his “knowledge and use of the law was profound, and his pleading before juries was always persuasive.” He had little impact in the Senate, however.

John Calvin “Toby” Munn was born in Prescott (Nevada County). Munn was a commander in the Pacific Theater of World War II and a pioneer among U.S. Marine aviators who perfected the use of aircraft carriers for combat operations. After the war, he was responsible for securing the major Japanese Yokosuka Naval Base, which became the largest U.S. naval base in the Far East. During his career, he continued to guide the improvement of U.S. Marine air capabilities, and he rose to the top echelon of marine leadership as the assistant commandant of the United States Marine Corps.

An unknown assailant tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Baptist minister Dale Crowley by thrusting a machine gun through the bars of the cell at the Craighead County Jail where Crowley was being held and firing it. Crowley was being held for the murder of J. W. McMurdo. Seven days previous, Crowley, leader of the Jonesboro Baptist Church, shot and killed McMurdo, who had been hired as a watchman by a competing faction within the church community. Crowley had shown up at the church to claim possession of the tabernacle following a court ruling in his favor. This incident was part of a series of violent conflicts between various factions in the Baptist community of Jonesboro (Craighead County) now known as the Jonesboro Church Wars.

The Drew County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The courthouse was nominated for its architectural significance as the best example of a Classical Moderne–style building in the area. The Drew County Courthouse, located at 210 South Main Street in Monticello (Drew County), is a three-and-a-half-story Classical Moderne–style building that was constructed in 1932. This is the fourth courthouse building that has been constructed for Drew County.

The Choctaw reluctantly agreed to move to Arkansas by agreeing to the Treaty of Doak’s Stand in Mississippi. The United States’ representative at the treaty negotiations, future president Andrew Jackson, paid little attention to the map and agreed to transfer to the Choctaw Nation a large part of southwest Arkansas—at part that already had been surveyed and sold by the U.S. government to settlers. This caused an uproar resulting in several other treaties, one of which left Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in Oklahoma.

Crawford County was created, encompassing a large part of Indian Territory and all or part of five present-day counties—Scott, Sebastian, Franklin, Washington, and Pope. It was named to honor William H. Crawford of Georgia, who was then the secretary of the treasury. Due to the extensive geographical area, it was often referred to as the “empire county.” Modern-day Crawford County is situated in northwest Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. The Boston Mountains to the north and the Arkansas River Valley to the south provide a diverse landscape and play an important role in the economy. The county is centrally located within the nation, thus allowing desirable north-south and east-west transportation networks to support industrialization, manufacturing, and tourism growth.

Mamie Phipps Clark, the first African-American woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree in psychology from Columbia University, was born in Hot Springs (Garland County). The research she did with her husband was important in the success of the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” with regard to education to be unconstitutional because such separation generated “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community” on the part of African-American students.

Winthrop Rockefeller opened the Museum of Automobiles with thirty-three cars on display, some of them his own, along with others from the Rockefeller family. When Rockefeller made Arkansas his home in 1953, he had developed Winrock Farms on Petit Jean Mountain. In 1961, he purchased a collection of fine antique and classic cars from the James Melton museum of Hypoluxo, Florida. He had a building constructed on Petit Jean Mountain to house the cars and named it the Museum of Automobiles. The museum is located atop Petit Jean Mountain in Conway County. It is primarily dedicated to the exhibition of quality antique and vintage automobiles, as well as related items for the cultural and educational benefit of the general public.

The Franklin County Courthouse in Charleston was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located at 607 East Main Street, the Franklin County Courthouse for the Southern District was constructed as a two-story structure fashioned in Classical Revival Style. The courthouse is a two-and-a-half-story red brick, rectangular building with a flat roof. The brick pilasters divide the building into bays and add dimension to its surface. The second-story fan windows soften the sharp design lines.

The Cotter Bridge (officially named the R. M. Ruthven Bridge) was dedicated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. A four-lane bridge that was opened north of Cotter (Baxter County) for U.S. Highway 62/412 was supposed to replace the Cotter Bridge, but local protests saved it. It was renovated and reopened in 2004. Completed in 1930, the bridge is located near Cotter on the business route of U.S. Highway 62 and crosses the White River between Baxter and Marion counties. It is recognizable for its Rainbow Arches.

The community of Marvell in Phillips County was incorporated. Marvell began as a railroad town in the 1870s and became one of the largest communities in Phillips County. It is best known as the hometown of musician Levon Helm.

William Fosgate Kirby from Texarkana (Miller County)—who had recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in law from Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, in the same class as his father—married Ella Kelly of Texarkana. Kirby established a law practice and later became an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He also served as state attorney general and a U.S. senator. In 1903, he was commissioned by the General Assembly to produce an authoritative compilation of Arkansas’s statutes, which was published the following year as Kirby’s Digest of the Statutes of Arkansas.

Hot Springs (Garland County) native Mary Lewis made her opera debut in Europe as Marguerite in Faust. Lewis was possibly the most publicized singer of the 1920s. Using her childhood training, she climbed her way to grand opera, gaining stage experience through vaudeville and operetta. Her career included radio performances and recordings with HMV, Victor, and RCA.

Frank “Jelly” Nash, who was the deputy warden’s chef and general handyman, was sent on an errand outside the prison where he was being held and never returned. Nash had been enticed across the U.S.-Mexico border and arrested for robbing the Katy Limited in early 1924. On March 1, 1924, Nash and three members of the Spencer gang received twenty-five-year sentences at the federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for mail robbery and assault on a mail custodian. After his escape, Nash was apprehended by the FBI in Hot Springs (Garland County) the day before his death during the Kansas City Massacre shootout. He is buried in Paragould (Greene County), where he had spent part of his childhood.

A state exhibition planned by the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts opened at the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Thirty artists were allowed to show three paintings, and ten artists from the exhibition were chosen to include their work in a Washington DC exhibit. The Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts is composed of a group of prominent Arkansas women who work to support female Arkansas artists.

The first issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was published. The Arkansas Gazette, Arkansas’s first newspaper, had been established in 1819, seventeen years before Arkansas became a state. Its editorial stance for law and order during the desegregation of Central High School in 1957 earned the newspaper two Pulitzer prizes—the first time in history one newspaper won two Pulitzers in the same year. Known for its liberal editorial pages in a conservative Southern state, the Gazette closed on October 18, 1991, after a bitter newspaper war with its cross-town rival, the Arkansas Democrat.

Adrian Brewer, an acclaimed artist who made Arkansas his adopted home, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Rosa Koempel Brewer and widely recognized portrait artist Nicholas Richard Brewer. Brewer married Edwina Cook of Hot Springs (Garland County), whom he met while accompanying his father on a portrait-painting commission. The younger Brewer established the Adrian Brewer School of Art; during World War II, he initiated a program to bring art to the average citizen. Beginning during the Depression, he painted more than 300 portraits of prominent Arkansas citizens. He is also known for his pastoral paintings of the Southwest and rural scenes in Arkansas.

The enmity that many Harrison residents felt for the African-American population came to a head following the financial collapse of the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad and the attendant loss of jobs and income. A white mob stormed the jail, took two black prisoners and several others outside the city limits, whipped them, and ordered them to leave town. In what became known as the Harrison Race Riots, the mob then went on a rampage in the black community, burning homes and shooting out windows before ordering the black residents to leave town.

More than 500 men and twelve machine guns arrived in Elaine (Phillips County) from Camp Pike in order to quell what they had been told was a race riot in progress. Governor Charles Brough accompanied the troops in order to assess the situation. Touched off by white reaction to the possible formation of a sharecroppers’ union, the Elaine Massacre claimed the lives of an unknown number of African Americans, with low estimates at twenty-five and high estimates at 800.

The Arkansas Razorbacks football team extended its winning streak to fifteen games by defeating Texas Christian University by a score of 28-0 at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock (Pulaski County). After the team had completed the second undefeated regular season in a row, the winning streak ended at twenty-two games with a defeat at the hands of Louisiana State University in the January 1, 1966, Cotton Bowl.

The Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame opened with a permanent home in the Pine Bluff Convention Center in Jefferson County. Created to celebrate Arkansans who have made outstanding contributions to the entertainment industry, the museum honors performers, non-performing contributors (such as writers, directors, and producers), and pioneers in the entertainment industry. A life-size animatronic statue of Johnny Cash greets visitors with some of the most popular songs of his career. Many other well-known Arkansas entertainers, both performing and non-performing, who have been inducted into the hall of fame have contributed artifacts to the exhibits that represent their achievements. For example, the museum houses Bob Burns’s “bazooka” as well as the musical instruments and clothing of other performers.

Painter Essie Ann Treat Ward was born in the community of Nubbin Hill (Searcy County). She is often referred to as “Grandma Moses of the Ozarks” for her paintings, which are fascinating examples of primitive art. From a field of 150 folk painters, she was chosen as one of the top ten in Arkansas, receiving recognition and appreciation in her native region and state.

William Fewell “Casey” Laman was born on a farm north of Jacksonville (Pulaski County) to James Newton Laman and Anna Fewell Laman. Laman exerted a vigorous—albeit dictatorial—style of leadership during his sixteen-and-a-half-year reign as mayor of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). Serving four terms from 1958 through 1972, and the balance of an unfilled mayoral term from 1979 through 1980, he modernized one of the state’s most populous cities by directing millions of federal, state, and local dollars for housing, education, recreation, and infrastructure.

Helen Hagstrom was born in Cash (Craighead County). Hagstrom, under the name of Carolina Cotton, is best known for her country and western swing music and yodeling, as well as her appearances in numerous television specials, radio programs, and films. Nicknamed “The Yodeling Blonde Bombshell,” Carolina Cotton was an entertainer and teacher throughout her life.

Samuel Kountz Jr., a physician and pioneer in organ transplantation, particularly renal transplant research and surgery, was born in Lexa (Phillips County). An Arkansas success story, he overcame the limitations of his childhood as an African American in the Delta region of a racially segregated state and the handicaps of inadequate early education to achieve national and world prominence in the medical field.

Esther Bindursky, editor of the weekly Lepanto News Record for thirty-four years, had published in the Saturday Evening Post her story about a young Lepanto (Poinsett County) man, Staff Sergeant Jimmy Hendrix, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. She was also a skilled photographer. One of her nationally circulated news photos of a nun who survived a 1955 train wreck in Marked Tree (Poinsett County) that killed five people won a first-place National Federation of Press Women (NFPW) award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Howell A. “Doc” Rayburn joined the Confederate army when he enlisted in Company C, Twelfth Texas Cavalry. The regiment moved to Des Arc (Prairie County) in March 1862 and prepared to board steamers that were to carry them to Mississippi. When the regiment departed, they left Rayburn behind with a fever. In 1863, after a long recovery from his illness, he began recruiting local youths to form a guerrilla band. For the next two years, Rayburn and his band were a nuisance to Union military authorities, attacking scouting and foraging parties. In at least one such attack near West Point, Rayburn’s men donned Union uniforms and took their enemy by surprise. Numerous expeditions were mounted to capture Rayburn, but none were successful.

Lafayette Gregg was named chair of the state banking association. That same year, he was appointed as a state commissioner to represent Arkansas during the “World’s Columbian Exposition” (the World’s Fair of Chicago) in 1893. He died in November 1891, however, only a month after becoming the banking association chair and two years before the fair. Gregg was a member of one of the pioneering families in northwestern Arkansas and was involved in nearly every major historical event in Arkansas history that happened during his lifetime. Most remembered as an instrumental figure in the location of Arkansas Industrial University—later the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County)—he was also a banker, lawyer, state representative, Civil War veteran, and Arkansas Supreme Court justice.

Violet Brumley Hensley—who has been called the “Whittling Fiddler,” the “Stradavarius of the Ozarks,” and the “Fiddle Maker”—was born in Mount Ida (Montgomery County). Before she was sixteen, she made a fiddle for herself, patterning her work from her father’s fiddle-making and with his guidance. After marrying and raising nine children, she continued her work of making and playing fiddles. In 2000, she was designated an Arkansas Living Treasure by the Arkansas Arts Council. She has been featured in national magazines, has appeared on well-known television shows, and has had a weekly radio show. In the twenty-first century, she continued to teach fiddle-playing and fiddle-making at her home in Yellville (Marion County), while still assisting with the repair of instruments.

John Henry “Barnie” Barnhill—successful head football coach both at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville—died. Barnhill left the most lasting imprint in Fayetteville (Washington County) as UA’s athletic director. Barnhill was elected to the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and was among the eight inductees, including Frank Broyles and Clyde “Smackover” Scott, composing the first class of the UA Sports Hall of Honor founded in 1988.

President Jimmy Carter nominated Elsijane Trimble Roy to be the first woman federal district court judge in the Eighth Circuit, as recommended by Senators Dale Bumpers and John L. McClellan, and the U.S. Senate confirmed her on November 1, 1977. Roy occupied the position for twenty-one years, taking senior status in 1989 and retiring in 1999. Roy was Arkansas’s first woman circuit judge, the first woman on the Arkansas Supreme Court, the first woman appointed to an Arkansas federal judgeship, the first woman federal judge in the Eighth Circuit, and the first Arkansas woman to follow her father as a federal judge.

Reconstruction-era Arkansas representative and U.S. congressman James Hinds was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. Hinds’s funeral procession in Little Rock—consisting of military, state, federal, county, and city officers, as well as fire companies, representatives of black schools, and average citizens—marched from the capitol to the railroad station. All businesses closed during the procession. Hinds’s remains were returned to Salem, New York, via railroad transport and ultimately interred in East Norwich, New York. He also has an honorary marker in the U.S. Congressional Cemetery in Washington DC.

The international Nature Conservancy headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. The Arkansas field office, established on April 12, 1982, became the organization’s twenty-ninth state program. The Nature Conservancy’s mission is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.

During the Cold War era, the Ninety-seventh Bombardment Wing at Blytheville Air Force Base (renamed Eaker Air Force Base in 1988) was placed on airborne alert when it was discovered that nuclear missile silos were being constructed in Cuba with Soviet assistance. The following day, the Strategic Air Command declared defense readiness condition (DEFCON) II for the first time in American history. Two B-52G bombers were placed on airborne alert and were ready to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons if necessary. The standoff ended, and the wing returned on November 15. The wing was presented with the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award for its performance during this Cold War crisis.

Race car driver Mark Martin earned his first Winston Cup victory at North Carolina Motor Speedway. Martin was the only driver from Arkansas competing in the top circuit of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). At the height of his career, he ranked tenth on the all-time win list and sixth on the all-time pole position list. In 2017, he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Dr. Timothy J. Cloyd was installed as the tenth president of Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County). Plans for a college village to be built on an undeveloped tract of land owned by and adjacent to the college were announced a few years into Cloyd’s tenure. His president’s report for 2005–2006 stated, “We change the lives of those who will change the world.”

Federal and Confederate forces met just outside of present-day Bryant (Saline County) in a minor engagement of the Civil War known as the Skirmish at Hurricane Creek, or the Battle of Hunter’s Crossing. After raiding a Confederate arsenal at Princeton (Dallas County), Federal troops were met by the Eleventh Arkansas Confederate Cavalry. The skirmish was of little tactical significance, but it resulted in twenty-eight men killed and eleven wounded.

The Pacific & Great Eastern Railroad Co., which built a line to Wyman twelve miles east of Fayetteville (Washington County), incorporated. The line was doomed when the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Co. built a branch line to St. Paul and Pettigrew in Madison County. The St. Paul branch provided transportation for a great amount of hardwood for processing into railroad ties, furniture, handles, and various other wood products.

The city of Black Rock (Lawrence County) incorporated. Situated on the Black River at the edge of the Ozark Mountains, it reportedly takes its name from black rocks in the area. The city was a boomtown, rising due to the development of railroads and timber interests, and was later sustained by the pearling industry.

Aaron Woodruff Lyon, the founder of the first academy chartered by the State of Arkansas, died of pneumonia in Fresno, California. Lyon was also instrumental in the development of Batesville in Independence County and Elizabeth in Jackson County.

W. B. Worthen died after a short illness. Upon his death, the Arkansas Democrat editorialized that “some of the largest and most important financial transactions of the State were engineered and executed by Mr. Worthen…with unswerving integrity and honesty of purpose.” Worthen was a banker in Arkansas from 1874 until his death, and he also wrote a history of Arkansas banking. The bank he founded survived recessions and the Great Depression, becoming the largest bank holding company in the state, until its acquisition by Boatmen’s Bank in 1994. It then became part of Bank of America.

William Badgett Gatewood Jr. died. Gatewood was a nationally recognized scholar and longtime professor of history at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He also served briefly as chancellor of the university. Gatewood was the author, co-author, or editor of fourteen books and more than seventy-five articles in scholarly journals. In addition to his service to UA and the history community, Gatewood was also a founding board member of the Fayetteville Community Foundation and the Walton Arts Center Council and served as a member of the board of directors of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and the Arkansas Humanities Council.

Nathaniel Mattox “Preacher” Doke married his first wife, Matilda Gaer Ballard, in Marshalltown, Iowa. Doke was a Benton County pioneer, evangelist, entrepreneur, and benefactor. The Methodist exhorter “talked from his heels” in a sincere, convincing manner and was also a master carpenter, blacksmith, farmer, hunter, and fiddler. By the turn of the century, Doke had married for the third time and fathered a total of twenty-three children, seven of whom were borne by Ballard.

The Skirmish at Buffalo Mountains took place. The outcome of the skirmish was ultimately inconclusive, as both sides completed their objectives, with Colonel Joseph O. Shelby continuing to retreat southward following his raid into Missouri, while the Federals were able to keep the Confederate forces from returning to Missouri.

The New York World referred to the Black Hawk War, a Reconstruction-era political and racial conflict, with the classic rhetoric of the times, as “a foray of infuriated blacks armed to the teeth, and led on by a scoundrel carpet-bagger upon a town, with avowed intent to slay the men and violate the women thereof.” Mississippi County was a hotbed of violent, racist activity at the time, and many African Americans wanted to protect their newfound freedoms. Charles B. Fitzpatrick’s flight after shooting Sheriff J. B. Murray in August 1872 (and subsequently arming himself with a guard of African Americans) and the unwillingness of the state government to intervene seem to have left local black citizens open to reprisals.

William Arthur Carr, Arkansas’s first Olympic double gold-medal winner, was born in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). He set new records for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles, California, Olympics and was named to the Sports Illustrated All-Time Olympic Team in 1954.

Les Pomeroy and fellow University of Wisconsin classmate Eugene P. Connor sailed on the Monteagle from Vancouver, British Columbia, bound for Japan. With five letters of introduction, they managed to find work doing dry kiln consulting. They worked as seamen from the Philippines to Japan, China, Egypt, India, Siberia, and Italy, then across the European continent to do forestry research in France and England. Although Sierra Club founder John Muir championed forest conservation by setting aside large acreages, it was Pomeroy who devised a conservation plan for growing and harvesting timber that both conserved it and turned it into a renewable resource. His science-based management plans regenerated timberlands across the South, and he carried out his groundbreaking work in Arkansas.

The first World Championship Quartz Crystal Festival began, which was attended by some two thousand residents and visitors from coast to coast. The Quartz Crystal Dig is held annually the second week of October in the Mount Ida (Montgomery County) area. The dig is a three-day event with two divisions: crystal points and clusters. The winners keep the crystals they mine and share in $1,500 in prize money. Contestants pay a $75 registration fee and compete in both divisions. In addition to the prize money, there are crystal trophies for each of the two categories and other prizes. About 10,000 people attended the dig in 1998. This included visitors from twenty-nine states, Canada, and the Netherlands.

Outlaw Jim Miller was born near Van Buren (Crawford County). Miller spent much of his life, however, in Texas and Oklahoma, where he earned a reputation as a professional assassin, manipulating the court system to avoid prison. After Miller killed former Oklahoma deputy U.S. marshal A. A. “Gus” Bobbitt near Ada, Oklahoma, in 1909, Miller and three of his associates were arrested and placed in the Ada jail. In the early morning hours of April 19, 1909, a mob overpowered the two jailers, took Miller, Joe Allen, Jesse West, and Berry Burrell to a nearby stable, and lynched them. A photographer was called in, and his photograph of the four men hanging has become an icon in the lore of the Old West.

The Action at Pine Bluff was fought when Brigadier General John Sappington Marmaduke’s Confederate cavalry division attacked the small Union garrison under Colonel Powell Clayton, which had occupied Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) following the capture of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Resulting in a Union victory, it was the last sizable military engagement in Arkansas in 1863.