May 27, 1848

The steamboat Cotton Plant was greeted with an artillery salute when it arrived in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The festivities honored C. C. Danley’s return from the Mexican War, but the Cotton Plant also brought home the body of Chester Ashley. A member of the powerful Conway-Sevier-Johnson political faction, which controlled state politics until the Civil War, he was the third Arkansan elected to the U.S. Senate and was probably the wealthiest Arkansan for much of his life because of his land holdings. Ashley was buried in Mount Holly Cemetery, which he and Roswell Beebe had donated to the city of Little Rock in 1843.