Days in AR History

More than 1,000 faculty, staff, students, townspeople, state representatives, and University of Arkansas System dignitaries participated in the investiture of Chancellor Paul B. Beran, who in his acceptance speech put forward his goal for the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith (UAFS) to become a leading regional university. The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith (UAFS) is a state-supported liberal arts institution of higher education with its main campus located near Interstate 540 in the north-central part of the city. The 164-acre campus is a local landmark highly prized by area citizenry for its well-kept beauty.

Gideon Shryock, the architect responsible for planning the Old State House in Little Rock (Pulaski County), which is deemed the finest example of Greek Revival architecture in the state, was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Although Shryock drew plans for the building—envisioned by territorial governor John Pope to be a new territorial capitol that “would command the admiration and respect of the passing stranger, and have moral and political influence on the whole community”—he was never able to visit Little Rock. He is also believed to have designed Curran Hall, now used as Little Rock’s visitor information center.

Ferd Havis was born in Desha County to a white farmer and a slave mother. His father moved to Jefferson County, where Havis learned the barber’s trade. Even with little education, he became prosperous and was called the “Colored Millionaire.” He was elected alderman for five terms and was elected state representative, but he resigned to accept the post of Jefferson County assessor. He served five terms as Jefferson County circuit clerk, chaired the Jefferson County Republican Party for twenty years, served as a delegate to National Republican Convention in 1880, and was vice president of the Arkansas Republican Party in 1888. Despite worsening relations between the races after Reconstruction, Havis continued to be influential and prosperous, partly because of his charismatic disposition.

The Detroit Tigers’ Herbert “Babe” Ellison, the youngest player in the American League during both the 1916 and 1917 seasons, was born in Rutland (Yell County). Although the state of Arkansas has never been home to any major league team, Arkansas has contributed in many ways to the sport and its professional roster. While some players from other places developed and improved their skills as college or minor league baseball players in Arkansas (playing for teams such as the Arkansas Razorbacks or the Arkansas Travelers), as of the end of the 2011 baseball season, 148 major league baseball players were born in Arkansas.

“Little Willie” John, a powerful rhythm and blues vocalist and songwriter who recorded several hit songs, including the original version of “Fever” at age eighteen, was born in Cullendale (Ouachita County). From Peggy Lee to Madonna, the song “Fever” lives on through countless versions, but John’s haunting, tortured vocals have yet to be replicated. Imprisoned for murder at age twenty-six and dead in prison two years later, he left a brief but profound musical legacy.

Albert E. Brumley, one of the most successful American gospel song composers of the twentieth century, died. He penned such standards as “I’ll Fly Away,” “I’ll Meet You in the Morning,” “If We Never Meet Again,” and “Turn Your Radio On.” Between 1926 and 1931, he studied, lived, and worked at the Hartford Music Company in Hartford (Sebastian County) under the tutelage of its founder, E. M. Bartlett. He is buried in the Fox Cemetery just outside of Powell, Missouri. Estimates of his total output range from 600 to 800 songs.

The True Democrat reported: “On last Thursday (November 5) the corner-stone of St. Johns’ College was laid by the Masonic fraternity, the Grand Lodge of the state being in session.” Its main building being 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 on October 10, 1859. By this time, two other colleges in Arkansas were holding classes: Arkansas College of Fayetteville and Cane Hill College, both in Washington County.

The daughters of Isaac Murphy began their return journey to Huntsville (Madison County) after visiting him in Pea Ridge. Following the Battle of Pea Ridge, Murphy’s life had been threatened, and he had been forced to flee to Pea Ridge (Benton County). Murphy’s plans to have his family moved to Missouri failed, and his daughters remained in Huntsville, where they faced constant harassment. By the fall of 1862, Murphy’s daughters had made the trip to Pea Ridge. As the Battle of Prairie Grove approached, they had to be sent back to Huntsville. Colonel Albert W. Bishop furnished an escort of twenty-five soldiers. A following skirmish may have contributed to the shooting of nine men by Union soldiers, which became known as the Huntsville Massacre.

William Fosgate Kirby, who became an associate justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court and also served as state attorney general and U.S. senator, was born near Texarkana (Miller County) to a farm family who had moved from Alabama. He was a friend and political ally of Jeff Davis, who was an ardent agrarian, and he was a spirited opponent to President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to involve the United States in World War I. In 1903, he was commissioned by the General Assembly to produce an authoritative compilation of Arkansas’s statutes, resulting in the 1904 publication of Kirby’s Digest of the Statutes of Arkansas.

Bass Reeves served his last day as deputy U.S. marshal in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Born a slave in Crawford County, Reeves went on to become one of the first African-American lawmen west of the Mississippi River. As one of the most respected lawmen working in Indian Territory, he achieved legendary status for the number of criminals he captured.

The city of Trumann (Poinsett County) was incorporated. Located along U.S. Highway 63, Trumann lies in the “sunken lands” region of northeast Arkansas. Trumann was a lumber town for the first part of its life, but it later became essentially a company town for the Singer Company. The popularity of the Singer sewing machine resulted in a great demand for lumber. People flocked to Trumann from the surrounding area to obtain jobs in the mills, and later in the factory, causing the population to grow.

The town of Bassett (Mississippi County) was incorporated. Bassett is located on Highway 61 about halfway between Wilson (Mississippi County) and Joiner (Mississippi County). Although the community had remained unincorporated for about a century, the residents of Bassett decided to seek incorporation as a town in 1965 so they could raise money—both local taxes and matching funds from state and federal programs—to pave streets, provide water and sewer service, and offer other benefits of incorporated status.

The General Assembly ratified a constitutional amendment outlawing banks and banking. The amendment stated that no banks could be established in the state of Arkansas. The law did not affect any actual banks, because the State Bank and Real Estate Bank had already closed, their failure having led to the amendment in the first place. The banks—which had made too many loans without adequate security and were involved in fraud and dishonesty—collapsed, causing the fledgling state of Arkansas to owe more than $3 million in debts.

A secret Unionist organization called the Peace Society, which opposed Confederate military service, was betrayed by John Holmes in Van Buren County, and word of the society spread rapidly. Investigations of the Peace Society, first in Fulton County then in Izard County, led to its discovery on the (1861) Izard–Searcy county line. When the organization was discovered in Searcy County on November 20, Colonel Samuel Leslie called out the Searcy County militia. The militia investigated and arrested more than 100 men, and, in early December, marched eighty-seven of them in chains to Little Rock (Pulaski County). Forced into the Confederate army, they were sent to Bowling Green, Kentucky. The Peace Society existed in several counties in north-central Arkansas.

James “Ike” Tomlinson was born in Macon, Illinois. Tomlinson was responsible for the revival of the athletics program at Arkansas State University (ASU) after World War II. An athlete who coached five sports, he served as head baseball coach for thirty-two years, also serving as ASU’s athletic director for three decades. He was named Associated Press National Coach of the Year and was selected for induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. In 1993, ASU’s baseball complex, Tomlinson Stadium, was named in his honor.

The Saenger Theatre, which was known as the “Showplace of the South,” opened in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and made the city an entertainment center for southeast Arkansas. The building, now one of only about 100 remaining of 300 theaters built by the Saenger brothers in the 1920s, cost $200,000 at the time and seated 1,500 people. On the front row of the Saenger at the opening were stars such as Gloria Swanson, Norma Talmadge, and producer D. W. Griffith, along with proprietor Julian Saenger. Al G. Fields Minstrels, Ziegfeld Follies, and other traveling theatrical groups performed at the Saenger Theatre. Roy Rogers, his horse Trigger, and Will Rogers were among the many notable performers who entertained there.

The Nevada County Depot and Museum, located in the former Iron Mountain Railroad Depot in downtown Prescott (Nevada County), was put on the National Register of Historic Places. The museum, founded in 1976 as the Nevada County State Park Association, is the only museum in Nevada County. It houses exhibits on early county history, Civil War battles fought in the area, and the railroad history of the county. It also posts rotating exhibits of photographs of daily life in the 1930s and 1940s.

Journalist and artist William Minor “Cush” Quesenbury (the nickname reflecting how the last name should be pronounced) married Adaline Parks in Cane Hill (Washington County), where they settled. He joined the gold rush to California in 1850, leaving his wife and first-born son, Stanley, behind. A diary and two sketchbooks survive from this expedition, and his detailed drawings of Western sites provide important documentation of historic places. Quesenbury did not prosper as a miner, but he did find work writing first for New Orleans’s California True Delta and then for the new Sacramento Daily Union, whose editor, John F. Morse, promoted public health and scientific agriculture, causes that Quesenbury later supported.

Daniel Phillips Upham died at his home in Dudley, Massachusetts. Upham was an active Republican politician, businessman, plantation owner, and Arkansas State Militia commander following the Civil War. He is perhaps best remembered for his part during Reconstruction as the leader of a successful militia campaign against the Ku Klux Klan in the Militia War from 1868 to 1869. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Shirley (Van Buren County) was incorporated. The town rests on the Middle Fork of the Little Red River in northeastern Van Buren County. Established by the railroad, the town has become an agricultural center for the region with a focus also on recreation and tourism. Because it is near Greers Ferry Lake, Shirley also boasts of many recreational opportunities, including hiking, fishing, canoeing, golfing, and horseback riding.

Nineteen-year-old William Turner was lynched in Helena (Phillips County) for allegedly attacking a young white girl. He was arrested and placed in the jail, which adjoined the courthouse. According to the Arkansas Gazette, local citizens, in a state of “suppressed excitement,” began to gather near the courthouse during the afternoon. In an attempt to protect Turner from harm, two deputy sheriffs put him into a car shortly after dark to take him to jail in nearby Marianna (Lee County). They were only a short distance outside of Helena when they were stopped by a mob of twenty-five to thirty masked men who demanded the prisoner. The deputies, outnumbered, surrendered him, and he was shot by the roadside.

Chester Bush—who had succeeded his father, John E. Bush, a former slave who was co-founder of the hugely successful African-American fraternal organization the Mosaic Templars of America—died. John E. Bush had served as chief financial officer and chief operating officer of the organization and, following his death, was succeeded in the position first by his son Chester and then, after Chester’s death, by his son Aldridge.

Bill Seiz, one of the most active and visible leaders in Hot Springs (Garland County), died in Hot Springs. Seiz’s most noteworthy contributions to Hot Springs came in the areas of industrial development and city planning. He was an organizer and president of the Ouachita Area Development Council (OADC), the Chamber of Commerce Industrial Committee, the Garland County Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC/GCIDC), and the Hot Springs/Garland County Regional Planning Commission.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park, located in Little Rock (Pulaski County), was officially dedicated. Thousands attended the rain-soaked ceremony, including such notables as former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, President George W. Bush, U2 lead singer Bono, comedian Al Franken, and author Maya Angelou.

The Skirmish at Lawrenceville took place. Major William J. Teed led the Eighth Missouri Cavalry (US) in an attack against a Confederate force commanded by Major John B. Cocke on the farmland of a Dr. Green in Monroe County. Teed’s force captured and destroyed cooking utensils and a variety of other material goods and foodstuffs. This short skirmish appears to have taken place as part of general operations in southeastern Arkansas, with no direct connection to any larger Civil War campaign.

Robert Brownlee, the Scottish stonemason who helped build the first state house as well as many other historic landmarks in Pulaski County, died. Brownlee also helped create the monument to William Gilchrist, Grandmaster Mason of the Grand Lodge of Arkansas. The sixteen-foot gravestone sits on a nine-foot base and dominates the Masonic plot in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

William Allen Oldfield, who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Arkansas’s Second District since his election in 1908, died after more than twenty years in the office. The succession of his widow, Pearl, whose nomination was made by the Democratic Central Committee rather than in a special primary election, made her the first woman from Arkansas elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

William A. Oldfield died at age fifty-four in Washington DC after undergoing gall bladder surgery. Oldfield had been elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-first U.S. Congress and to the nine succeeding Congresses, serving from 1909 until his death. He served as a member of the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and was chosen as chair of the Democratic Congressional Committee, campaigning across the country for Democratic candidates and incumbents. He was reelected to the Seventy-first Congress, his tenth consecutive term, but he died before he could take office. His wife, Pearl Oldfield, was elected to serve out his term, becoming the first woman from Arkansas elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Birth control advocate Hilda Kahlert Cornish died. Cornish founded the Arkansas birth control movement and was instrumental in founding the organization that became Planned Parenthood Association of Arkansas. At Cornish’s initiative, a group of physicians, business and religious leaders, and women active in civic work formed the Arkansas Eugenics Association (AEA). Rabbi Ira Eugene Sanders said, “It was suggested that because the movement might evoke criticism on the part of the rather orthodox and staid community, that we call it the Arkansas Eugenics Association on the grounds that nobody would object to being well born.” In early 1931, AEA opened the Little Rock Birth Control Clinic in the basement of Baptist Hospital. AEA changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Association of Arkansas in 1942.

At a joint meeting of the State Parks, Recreation, and Travel Commission and the Heritage Commission, negotiations culminated with Governor Bill Clinton’s announcement that the state, in cooperation with the Nature Conservancy, would acquire an eleven-mile segment of the upper Cossatot to form the Cossatot River State Park–Natural Area. The park conserves a twelve-and-one-half-mile stretch of the Cossatot River, a southwest Arkansas stream included by the legislature in the state’s Natural and Scenic Rivers System.

Union County was founded, its name drawn from the petitions that citizens had presented to the legislature in the spirit of “Union and Unity.” Its county seat is El Dorado. At more than 1,000 square miles, Union County is the state’s largest. Ninety percent of the county is forested.

Minutes from the meeting of the board of trustees show that the board and Professor Martin R. Forey of Chicago, Illinois, designated the site of the first building for Judson University. Judson University was a short-lived institution of higher education in Prospect Bluff—present-day Judsonia (White County). The institution stimulated the migration of Northern families to the area, thereby significantly increasing the population and refining the social atmosphere of this typical, mid-nineteenth-century river town. Judson University had an ambitious curriculum and an experienced staff but very little money. At the height of its operations, more than 100 scholars were at the university being instructed in biology, geology, English, math, foreign languages, theology, telegraphy, painting, and elocution by a faculty of five.

Travis Calvin Jackson was born in Waldo (Columbia County). He was one of six native Arkansans elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He played for the New York Giants and was considered the best National League shortstop in the 1920s. Noted for his defense (which earned him the nickname Stonewall), he was also considered a clutch hitter.

Hot Springs (Garland County) native Alan Ladd was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his chest, which he said was accidental. Ladd was a movie actor who rose from poverty to star in forty-seven films, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. He often portrayed a solitary hero with a conscience and is best known for his title role in the classic western Shane (1953). Less than two years after the gunshot incident, at age fifty, Ladd was found dead at his Palm Springs, California, home of an overdose of sedatives and alcohol. He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. His star appears on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He also received a star on the Arkansas Walk of Fame in Hot Springs in 1997.

President Ronald Reagan came to Little Rock (Pulaski County) to attend the “America is Back” rally, which was held at the Governor’s Exhibition Hall in the Statehouse Convention Center.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Arkansas’s claim to cheese dip. In response, many Texas news outlets ran stories insisting that chile con queso (called “queso” for short), a melted cheese appetizer typically served in Mexican restaurants, is of Texan origin. Defenders of Arkansas’s centrality in the world of cheese dip pointed to the difference of consistency between cheese dip and traditional queso, as well as the larger role that cheese dip plays in Arkansas culture when compared with queso in Texas. Arkansas’s U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton, challenged their Texas counterparts, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, to a blind taste test in which Arkansas cheese dip, represented by Heights Taco & Tamale in Little Rock (Pulaski County), won.

The Skirmish at Buckskull occurred. After attempting to clear communication lines in Missouri, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Thilenius of the Fifty-sixth Regiment of Enrolled Missouri Militia led a raid into Arkansas to catch Confederate colonel Timothy Reeves at Cherokee Bay (Randolph County). Near Buckskull, on the Arkansas-Missouri border, Thilenius’s command killed two guerrillas believed to be members of Reeves’s command before charging the undefended town of Buckskull to find no opposing force.

The New York Philharmonic performed William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony at Carnegie Hall. 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 also a strong advocate for the performance of works by American composers.

The Plum Bayou resettlement community was dedicated. The federal Resettlement Administration, as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, had purchased 9,854 acres of fertile land for 180 families to settle. Each family was given a long-term mortgage and a chance to own the land. At the dedication, a crowd of about 3,000 listened to speeches by honored guests such as Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, Senators Joseph T. Robinson and Hattie Caraway, and Governor J. Marion Futrell. This farmstead experiment, intended to help tenant farmers get back on their feet during the Depression, reflected the enduring American dream of family farm ownership.

Barbara Hendricks, an internationally recognized leading lyric soprano, was born in Stephens (Ouachita County). Whether performing light soprano roles in traditional operatic repertory or demanding premieres of twentieth-century vocal music, song recitals, and jazz, Hendricks has been hailed as a leading artist since the mid-1970s. In addition, she is known internationally for her work for human rights and world peace.

Rodger Bumpass, who has won honors and recognition as an actor and for voice performance in film and on television, was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Bumpass graduated from Little Rock Central High School and from Arkansas State University where he had won an announcing contest in a radio and television competition. He has performed all over the country and is widely known as the voice of the character Squidward in the Spongebob Square Pants film and TV series.

Representatives from the four Masonic lodges in Arkansas met in Little Rock (Pulaski County) to form the Grand Lodge of Arkansas. By 1838, there were about 100 Masons in Arkansas’s four lodges. In the government of the Freemasons, a lodge must have a charter or authority from a recognized Grand Lodge to work, meet, and initiate new people into the fraternity. In Masonic law, four regularly chartered lodges may unite and establish a Grand Lodge in an area where no other Grand Lodge holds exclusive jurisdiction.

Carrie Nation, who became a temperance advocate so fervent that she was known to smash with a hatchet any place that sold alcohol, married a doctor named Charles Gloyd. She did not know at the time they were married that Gloyd was an alcoholic, and she blamed his alcoholism for the fact that their only child, a girl, had a mental disability. He died a month after she left him.

Almeda James Riddle was born in West Pangburn (Cleburne County). Discovered by a ballad collector in the 1950s, she became a prominent figure in America’s folk music revival. After two decades of concerts and recordings, she received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts for her contributions to the preservation of Ozark folksong traditions.

Actor Laurence Luckinbill was born in Fort Smith (Sebastian County). Luckinbill’s acting career extends through theater, television, and motion pictures. He had a Tony-nominated role in the play The Shadow Box (1977) and a co-starring role as Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Luckinbill has appeared in television shows such as Law and Order and Murder She Wrote, and he played Herr Schultz in the revival of Cabaret in 1999. As of 2012, he continues to do narration and voice-over work.

The King Biscuit Time radio program went on the air on KFFA, 1360 AM, Helena’s first local radio station. Soon after the station’s first broadcast, blues musicians Robert Lockwood Jr. and Sonny Boy Williamson II approached owner Sam Anderson with a proposal to air a local blues radio show. Anderson liked the idea, but he knew the show would have to have a sponsor. He directed Lockwood and Williamson to Max Moore, the owner of Interstate Grocer Company, as a possible sponsor. Moore, who recognized the possibilities of marketing to African Americans, agreed to sponsor the show if the musicians would endorse his product. With greatly increased sales of King Biscuit flour, Interstate Grocery began marketing Sonny Boy cornmeal.

The Albert Pike Hotel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located in downtown Little Rock (Pulaski County), the hotel opened in 1929 and was one of the state’s best-known hotels for decades. In 1971, Little Rock’s Second Baptist Church bought the hotel for $740,000 and transformed it into a residence hotel. In the twenty-first century, it remains a residential facility for individuals aged fifty-five and older.

Explorer Dr. George Hunter’s gun discharged while he was cleaning it, ripping through his thumb and lacerating two fingers. He remained in severe pain and in danger of infection for two weeks and was little help to the expedition, known as the Hunter-Dunbar expedition, which Thomas Jefferson commissioned to explore the “Wachita” River and the “hot springs” of Arkansas.

Two factions, led by Chester Ashley and William Russell, settled their differences, ending their year-long conflict over ownership of the land on which Little Rock, the proposed site for the territory’s capital, would stand. Two groups of speculators held conflicting claims to the location of what is today downtown Little Rock. Ashley represented the faction composed of James Bryan, William O’Hara, Amos Wheeler, and Governor William Read Miller, who claimed through a New Madrid certificate. William Russell headed the other faction, which also included Robert Crittenden, Henry Conway, Judge Andrew Scott, and a number of other prominent citizens, who claimed through pre-emption. Although Ashley’s faction lost in court, the two sides compromised and split up downtown Little Rock between them.

Seven men met in a blacksmith shop in Hot Springs (Garland County) with the goal of forming a local assembly of the Knights of Labor (KOL). The largest American labor organization of its era, the KOL recruited workers across boundaries of gender, race, and skill. The organization claimed more than 700,000 members at its peak in 1886, and actual membership at that time may have surpassed one million. In Arkansas, membership peaked at more than 5,000 in 1887, and despite the KOL’s official view of strikes as a measure of last resort, the organization led strikes in Arkansas among railroad workers, coal miners, and African-American farmhands.