Days in AR History - Starting with N

Oliver P. Snyder died in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). Snyder was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the Second District of Arkansas in the Forty-Second and Forty-Third U.S. Congresses, serving from 1871 to 1875.

Philip Doddridge McCulloch Jr. died. McCulloch was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represented the First District of Arkansas from 1893 to 1903, beginning in the Fifty-Third Congress and extending through the Fifty-Seventh Congress. After he left politics, he turned his attention to his legal practice in Marianna. McCulloch had acquired extensive land holdings in Lee County and was also the proprietor of several businesses in Marianna. He retired from practicing law in 1914.

French Jesuit priest Father Jacques Gravier celebrated the first Catholic mass in Arkansas along the Mississippi River at a Quapaw Indian village. The Diocese of Little Rock, which encompasses all of the state of Arkansas, was established in 1843.

Robert Crittenden, the first secretary and acting governor of Arkansas Territory, and Chester Ashley, a land speculator, entered into a “Partnership in the Practice of Law” to form what later became Rose Law Firm of Little Rock (Pulaski County), the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi River. Their hand-inked agreement remains on display at the firm. Crittenden and Ashley ultimately ended their partnership over political issues, but the firm continued its existence when Ashley partnered with George C. Watkins in 1837.

Mississippi County was established in eastern Arkansas. The area, on the banks of the Mississippi River, was home to prehistoric cultures and has many Indian artifacts. The area is believed to have been visited in the 1500s and 1600s by early explorers Hernando de Soto, Father Jacques Marquette, and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. Long a fertile agricultural mecca with abundant crops of cotton, corn, soybeans, and rice, the area had rich timber lands that were largely cut over in the first two decades of the twentieth century. In the twenty-first century, in addition to continuing agricultural production, the county is the largest steel-producing area in the country.

The first Cathedral of St. Andrew was dedicated by Arkansas’s first Catholic bishop, Andrew Byrne. Though he had few priests working under him during his tenure as bishop, he nonetheless managed to plant the Catholic faith deeply enough that it survived both the Civil War and his death in 1862, which resulted in the five-year absence of any bishop in Arkansas.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Elsijane Trimble Roy as the first woman federal district court judge in the Eighth Circuit, as recommended by Senators Dale Bumpers and John L. McClellan and nominated by President Jimmy Carter. Roy occupied the position for twenty-one years, taking senior status in 1989 and retiring in 1999. Making history throughout her life, 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.

The first Strengthen the Arm of Liberty Monument in Arkansas was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The monument stood in front of the Pine Bluff Library on Fifth Avenue from 1950 to the mid-l960s, when the library and the Pine Bluff city offices moved to the new, Edward Durrell Stone–designed Pine Bluff Civic Center. The statue was moved to the center of a grassy median adjacent to the Civic Center. The Strengthen the Arm of Liberty Monuments in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) and Fayetteville (Washington County) are replicas of the Statue of Liberty. They were erected in the 1950s as part of a patriotism campaign conducted by the Boy Scouts of America.

Ambrose Sevier was born in Greene County, Tennessee. Sevier was one of the founders of a political dynasty that ruled antebellum Arkansas politics from the 1820s until the Civil War. His cousin Henry Wharton Conway founded the Arkansas Democratic Party, and his other cousin, James Sevier Conway, served as Arkansas’s first state governor, while yet another cousin, Elias Nelson Conway, was the state’s fifth chief executive.

Henry Morton Stanley, who had departed Zanzibar bound for Ujiji in March, arrived in Ujiji, where Dr. David Livingstone resided. Livingstone, a medical missionary originally from Scotland, had not been heard from in many years, and Stanley had been sent to find him. When Stanley and Livingstone met face to face, Stanley offered his hand and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” When asked why he said it, he replied, “I couldn’t think of what else to say.” Stanley, world-renowned explorer of the Belgian Congo, specifically the Congo River, lived in Arkansas for a few months in 1860–1861, working as a clerk in a country store at Cypress Bend on the Arkansas River near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County).

The USS Arkansas (M-7), also known as the USS Ozark (BM-7)—one of four monitor-class naval vessels built for the U.S. Navy in the late 1800s—was launched. Although designed as surface warships, these vessels were primarily relegated to support operations because they were obsolete by the time they were finished. The Arkansas served various assignments before it was reflagged as the USS Ozark. In 1913, it was refitted as a submarine tender and a year later, it participated in the American occupation of Mexico. Before being decommissioned in 1919, the ship patrolled coastal waters near Key West, Central America, and the Panama Canal; it was sold for scrap metal early in 1922.

In a battle to take Rome near Mignano, Italy, during World War II, Arkansas native Maurice Lee “Footsie” Britt led his small company in a counterattack opposing approximately 100 German soldiers. Without the repulse of this attack, his battalion would have been isolated and his company destroyed. During this fierce battle, Britt received a bullet wound in his side while his chest, face, and hands were covered with wounds caused by grenades, yet he still managed to throw thirty-two hand grenades. His bold and aggressive actions against the Germans were successful and allowed several captured Americans to escape. For his military gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A state committee adopted “The Arkansas Traveler” as the title and melody of Arkansas’s second state song, with lyrics to be added after submissions from the public. In 1949, the State Song Commission published lyrics to the old fiddle tune with no indication of authorship. Two verses offered a nostalgic look at the traditional tale of the Arkansas Traveler, while the chorus offered sentiments worthy of any progressive booster. The legislature did not ratify the commission’s choice, but this updated version of the “Traveler” was the state’s de facto official song from 1949 to 1963. Despite its traditional roots, it was not popular, perhaps because of its somewhat awkward lyrics (particularly the rhyming of “Hurrah” with “Arkansas”).

John D. Adams became owner, with William D. Blocher, of the Daily Arkansas Gazette. Two years later, James Newton (J. N.) Smithee bought and started a competing newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat. Competition and public defamation led to a war between the newspapers’ owners that resulted in the Smithee-Adams Duel, often described as “the last duel fought in Arkansas.”

Lizzie Dorman Fyler, a suffragette lawyer from Massachusetts who made her home in Eureka Springs (Carroll County), died. She had led in the organization of the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association, which was created “for the purpose of securing such legislation as shall secure to woman all the rights and privileges which belong to citizens of a free republic.” The association that she had helped found disbanded only about a month before her death.

James Anthony Dibrell Jr., a founder of the University of Arkansas Medical Department (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences—UAMS) and its second dean, died of pneumonia. He is buried in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Dibrell home at 1400 Spring Street became known as “the gadget house” because of Dibrell’s love of modern devices such as doorbells, burglar alarms, and central heating. The home, still a private residence, remains in the twenty-first century as a cornerstone of Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter Historical District.

Ronald Lee “Dusty” Richards was born in Chicago, Illinois. Richards is the author of numerous western novels and a noted mentor each year to hundreds of beginning writers. Since 2000, he has been a patron contributor of the Arkansas Writers Conference. In 2005, he received the Cowboy Culture Award for the many hours he has volunteered in helping aspiring authors. Many of Richards’s novels are set in Arkansas.

National Guard pilot George Geyer Adams, who was killed when a propeller assembly exploded, was honored when the Little Rock (Pulaski County) municipal airport was named Adams Field. Adams was a member of the Observation Squadron of the Arkansas National Guard. The group is known for performing yeoman service during the Flood of 1927 in locating refugees, reporting levee breaks, and dropping medicine and supplies. They also carried the Batesville (Independence County) mail to Little Rock. Their aerial photographs documented conditions far better than land-based pictures. Afterward, the entire squadron received a peacetime citation from the secretary of war.

A large crowd gathered to watch a friendly shooting contest in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The contest featured famous frontiersman Davy Crockett of Tennessee. Crockett had stopped in Little Rock on his way to Texas, which was fighting for its independence from Mexico. With his rifle, “Betsey,” he fired his first shot through the center of the bull’s-eye. His second shot, to the shock of the crowd, lodged in the exact hole his first shot had made (although he admitted later to staging this feat). Crockett was the guest of honor at a public banquet that evening, and he departed for Texas the next day.

Chicot County resident Charles M. McDermott—a medical doctor, minister, plantation owner, Greek scholar, charter member of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and inventor—had his patent “Improvement in Apparatus for Navigating the Air” granted. His patented inventions included an iron wedge, an iron hoe, a cotton-picking machine, and a “flying machine.” When he felt confident at last in his gliders, he had hauled one of the flying machines by wagon to Washington DC to apply for the patent, which he received after thirty-nine years of experimentation. It is believed to be the first patent for an airplane.

The city government of Texarkana (Miller County) was established, and H. W. Beidler was elected mayor. Texarkana is in the southwest corner of Arkansas at the junction of Interstate 30 and U.S. 59, 67, 71, and 82. Its two separate municipalities—Texarkana, Arkansas, and Texarkana, Texas—sometimes function as one city. The name is a composite of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana (though Louisiana is thirty miles away). Texarkana is the Miller County seat and is home to the only Federal Building and post office situated in two states. The city motto is “Twice as Nice.”

William Jayson (Bill) Waggoner was born near the community of Needmore (Lonoke County). Waggoner was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives for the 1915 term. He represented Lonoke County, serving as temporary speaker of the house during his second term, and was also elected to the state constitutional convention before resigning from the Arkansas General Assembly in order to be commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I. After his return, he later served as both prosecuting attorney and circuit judge, being recognized as the longest-serving circuit judge in the state.

The Epperson v. Arkansas case was brought to a close when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Arkansas’s Initiated Act Number 1 unconstitutional. The act, which allowed the state to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, was challenged by Susan Epperson, a biology teacher at Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The case was two years old by the time it reached the Supreme Court, having passed lower courts that each gave a different ruling.

Bill Dickey, considered by baseball historians to be one of the best catchers in baseball history, died. Dickey played and later coached for the New York Yankees during that club’s dominance from the late 1920s to the early 1960s. The new baseball park for the Arkansas Travelers, which opened in 2007, is named Dickey-Stephens Park to honor Dickey and his brother and the Stephens brothers—Witt (founder of Stephens, Inc.) and Jack (longtime chief executive officer). Warren Stephens, Jack’s son and chief executive officer of Stephens, Inc., donated land for the park and named the facility for the four brothers who had shared a friendship and a love of baseball.

The Old Union School was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For the Birdell (Randolph County) community, the Old Union School survives as an example of the early history of this once thriving community. Located approximately two miles northwest of the community, the school is a prime example of what early education looked like in rural Arkansas.

Theophilus Hunter Holmes, who became a lieutenant general in the Confederate army and served variously as the commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department and commander of the District of Arkansas, was born in Sampson County, North Carolina. He is perhaps best known for his perceived failures in leadership during his time in Arkansas. Eventually maligned by soldiers and civilians alike, Holmes is a classic example of a Civil War commander who was promoted beyond his abilities.

Dan T. Nelson was lynched by a mob of African Americans in Lincoln County for allegedly murdering Ben Betts. Unlike most lynchings in Arkansas (and the United States), several of the perpetrators of this crime were actually tried and sent to jail, perhaps because the mob was composed entirely of African Americans.

C. Vann Woodward was born in Vanndale (Cross County). Woodward was arguably the twentieth century’s foremost Southern historian. Published in the 1950s, his Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 and The Strange Career of Jim Crow, which Martin Luther King Jr. said was the bible of the civil rights movement, remain vital interpretive narratives. His edited work, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982, and he also served as president of the Southern Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Historical Association.

Governor Harvey Parnell appointed Hattie Caraway to fill the vacancy left in the U.S. Senate caused by her husband’s death. Caraway went on to become the first woman elected to the Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, the first woman to chair a Senate committee, and the first woman to preside over a Senate hearing. She served from 1932 to 1945 and was a strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic recovery legislation during the Great Depression.

Author Roark Bradford, who had moved from Tennessee to near Cabot (Lonoke County) as a teenager, died of amebic dysentery, believed to have been contracted while he was stationed in French West Africa in 1943. Bradford was a popular journalist, novelist, and short-story writer. Much of his fiction focused on African-American life, with inspiration drawn from his childhood memories of growing up in Tennessee and Arkansas. His first book, Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun (1928), was the basis for the 1930 Pulitzer Prize–winning drama Green Pastures. At the time of his death, Bradford’s writings were very popular. Since the 1940s, however, many have criticized his work as patronizing and demeaning in its portrayal of black characters.

Bathhouse Row and its environs in Hot Springs National Park were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The attractive Victorian-style bathhouses in the rough-frontier-town-turned-elegant-spa-city were completed in 1888 and replaced by fire-resistant brick and stucco bathhouses by 1923. After the decline of the bathing industry in Hot Springs (Garland County), the desire to revitalize downtown led citizens to campaign for adaptive uses of the vacant bathhouses on Bathhouse Row.

John Bush, founder of the Mosaic Templars of America, was born in Moscow, Tennessee, to a slave mother whose owner brought the family to Arkansas in an effort to escape Union troops. Forced to attend school, Bush eventually graduated with honors from Capital City School in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and went on to hold important positions in the Republican Party and to become one of the wealthiest black men in Arkansas. The Mosaic Templars, an African-American fraternal organization of international scope that operated between the 1880s and 1930s, was one of the largest and most successful black-owned businesses in the nation and world.

Knobel (Clay County) was incorporated. Knobel is located in Clay County, about seven miles south of Corning (Clay County). Once a stop on the Iron Mountain Railroad, Knobel remains a minor agricultural center for the surrounding region.

Dick Powell was born in Mountain View (Stone County), the second of three sons of Sallie Thompson and Ewing Powell. His father was a machinery salesman sometimes credited with introducing the gasoline engine to north Arkansas. Powell’s mother encouraged her three sons’ interest in music. An ambitious man always pursuing new avenues for his creativity, Powell became a musician, actor, and director while experimenting with different media (radio, film, and television) at a time when not many did. The films of which he was a part ranged from 1930s comical musicals to 1940s films noir.

A second unit, consisting of 360 acres and known as the Osotowy Unit, was added to Arkansas Post National Memorial site near Gillett in Arkansas County. Arkansas Post is the place where the first permanent European colony in the Mississippi River Valley was established, and it served as the capital of the territory for a time. The first unit, the Memorial Unit, comprises 389 acres and has a visitor center with a museum and theater, as well as 2.5 miles of paved trails. The museum displays exhibits on archaeological finds at the park, the Civil War battle fought in the area, and other aspects of the history of Arkansas Post. The second unit, not open to the public, contains the Quapaw village of Osotowy, the Menard-Hodges archaeological site, and possibly the site of the first post, which was moved several times because of flooding.

The Menard-Hodges Site became the property of the National Park Service and is now the Osotouy Unit of Arkansas Post National Memorial. The Menard-Hodges Site, located in Arkansas County near Lake Dumond, is part of the Arkansas Post National Memorial. It is widely considered to be the first location of Arkansas Post and also a location of the Quapaw village of Osotouy. Archaeological research of the site has yielded many artifacts from both prehistoric and historic settlement of the region. Two large mounds and several smaller house mounds are still evident at the site, as are the locations of nineteenth-century French family farms. As of 2011, the site is closed to the public.

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.