Time Period: Post-Reconstruction through the Gilded Age (1875 - 1900)

Pine Ridge Community Cemetery

There are over 500 graves in the Pine Ridge Community Cemetery (originally Waters Cemetery) on Old Waters Highway in Pine Ridge (Montgomery County). Pine Ridge is between Oden (Montgomery County) and Cherry Hill (Polk County), one and a half miles east of the Montgomery-Polk county line on Arkansas Highway 88. The cemetery remains active in the twenty-first century. Most early settlers in the area were southern farmers and their families, traveling west by wagon train (farm wagons) throughout the 1800s. The valleys and streams fulfilled their needs, and so they stayed, as many descendants continued to do. The Ouachita National Forest constitutes over seventy percent of Montgomery County, so there is little industry other than farming, forestry, and tourism. The …

Pittman, Jennie Carr

Jennie Carr Pittman was one of Arkansas’s most prominent and influential figures in the campaign to secure the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. A major force in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the nation’s largest temperance organization, she played a substantive role—at both the state and national level—in the group’s ultimately successful effort to help enact the Eighteenth Amendment. Jennie Carr was born on December 26, 1858 (some sources have it as 1856), in Fredonia—later called Biscoe (Prairie County)—to Charles Turner Carr and his second wife, Susan Wesley Capehart Carr. Not much is known about her youth. While she was christened Mildred Jane, she later went by the name Jennie Mildred Carr until her marriage. On her …

Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church (Saline County)

The single-story Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church building at the confluence of West Lawson Road, Avilla West, and Lake Norrell Road is the one of the oldest religious buildings in Saline County. The simple wood-framed church was built in the Greek Revival style by Walter Overhault with help from local residents in 1894; the congregation had been meeting since 1880. Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church retains all the principal features that typify rural, vernacular Greek Revival churches of the late nineteenth century. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 1991. Pleasant Hill is an unincorporated community near Avilla (Saline County) that was settled in Saline County before the Civil War. Located on what was …

Plumerville Conflict of 1886–1892

During the late 1880s, electoral politics in Conway County turned violent, resulting in serious injuries and several deaths. In the Plumerville (Conway County) community, actions such as voter intimidation and the theft of ballot boxes were flagrant and seemingly condoned by public officials. The violence became widely known and was the subject of a federal investigation after the assassination of a congressional candidate, John Clayton. A pattern of local political affiliations and latent hostilities toward other factions developed and remained well into the twentieth century. While the political conflict renewed itself after the 1884 election, the underlying causes date back to the pre–Civil War days. Conway County was a small version of Arkansas in terms of geographic culture and economics. …

Polk Brothers (Lynching of)

On September 6, 1885, two white men popularly dubbed the “Polk boys”—brothers Henry and Sylvester Polk—were burned alive in the city jail at Murfreesboro (Pike County) after two previous unsuccessful attempts had been made to lynch them. They were in jail for the murder of a peddler named Frank Ward (variously described as either German or Irish), but the event that incited the violence was their success in obtaining a new trial.  Henry and Sylvester Polk, along with alleged accomplice Monroe Kuykendall, were originally indicted for murder in Howard County in September 1884 but obtained a change of venue and had their trial relocated to Pike County. Kuykendall’s case was later separated from that of the brothers. According to a summation of the affair in the April 22, 1885, Arkansas Gazette, Ward’s older brother, living in Prescott (Nevada County), had equipped Ward “for a …

Polk County Race War of 1896

In early August 1896, a “race war” broke out between white and Black workers who were working on the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railway (later the Kansas City Southern) in both Polk County and near Horatio (Sevier County) to the south. As a result, three African Americans were killed and eight wounded. Although reports place some of the events near Horatio, accounts clearly stated that the purpose of the attack was to keep African Americans out of Polk County, and so it was generally referred to as the Polk County Race War. This was part of a pattern of labor-related racial intimidation that was sweeping Arkansas at the time. Other incidents during that period included unrest at the Hawthorne …

Poll Tax

A poll tax is a uniform per capita tax levied upon a specified class of people often made a requirement for the right to vote. In Arkansas, use of a poll tax was as old as the state itself. Arkansas’s first state constitution, adopted in 1836, authorized the imposition of a poll tax to be used for county purposes, and a subsequent state statute authorized county courts to collect a poll tax not to exceed one dollar per year from every free male inhabitant between the ages of twenty-one and sixty. Provisions similar to that in the 1836 constitution were included in the subsequent Confederate state constitution of 1861 and Unionist state constitution of 1864 (the Confederate constitution allowed the …

Populist Movement

aka: People's Party
aka: Populism
During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, American farmers faced a variety of economic problems including rising business costs, a scarcity of credit, and falling crop prices. Frustrated farmers formed organizations to address such problems and ultimately turned to independent or third-party politics. These efforts coalesced in the 1890s with the founding of the People’s (or Populist) Party, which drew most of its support in the West and the South. In Arkansas, the third-party movement actually peaked between 1888 and 1890 under the guise of the Union Labor Party (ULP), which lasted fewer years than the Populist Party but won more support, unlike in other states. Origins of the Populist Movement The organized farmers’ movement in Arkansas began …

Post-Reconstruction through the Gilded Age, 1875 through 1900

In the years that followed Reconstruction, Arkansas experienced changes that paralleled trends taking place elsewhere in the nation. Nationally, the creation of the mass market and the economic growth that followed gave the era its basic character. The economy, and particularly the rise of industry, produced great prosperity for some whose spending habits gave the period its name—the Gilded Age. These developments also encouraged the movement of many people from the countryside to the city, producing a cultural and social transformation. But all of this came at a cost. Changes disrupted traditional economies and society, and many, particularly farmers and workers, failed to share in the bounty of the new world. In a state with an economy still largely agricultural, …

Postoak, John (Execution of)

On December 20, 1878, a Creek man named John Postoak was executed at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) after being convicted of the murder of a white man named John Ingley and his wife. Little is known about John Postoak except that the Wilmington Daily Gazette reported that he was the son of a member of the Creek Council. Reports indicated that he was twenty-five years old. In early October 1877, Postoak went to Ingley’s remote home near Eufala (in what is now Oklahoma). A later report in the Fort Smith New Era holds that Postoak first requested that Ingley’s wife write two letters for him, “which he expected to send to Okmulgee by Ingley,” but that Ingley replied that he …

Powhatan Courthouse

The Powhatan Historic Courthouse is located in the Powhatan Historic State Park, a stretch of a nineteenth-century river port town, and represents the rich judicial history and healthy commerce of northeastern Arkansas. It stands on a hill overlooking the Black River, not far from a collection of buildings that Arkansas State Parks also controls: the Powhatan Jail, the Ficklin-Imboden House, a commercial building, and the Powhatan Male and Female Academy. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program recognizes the courthouse as significant for Lawrence County’s history, while also serving as a good example of historic preservation. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 16, 1970. In 1869, Lawrence County voters approved moving their county seat from the …

Powhatan Methodist Church

The Powhatan Methodist Church is one of the historic buildings found at Powhatan State Park. The church exemplifies the nineteenth-century Greek Revival architectural style in which it was built. Records indicate that the Powhatan Methodist Church was formed in 1858 with a 284-member congregation under the direction of four local pastors. Members included white settlers, probationers, and African-American residents. Before the church building was constructed, church members in Powhatan (Lawrence County) may have gathered at the Black River for worship services. Around 1874, building plans for the Powhatan Methodist Church included one double-door entrance at the front and windows placed on each side of the building. The interior of the church has a large sanctuary with two cloak rooms that …

Pulaski County Lynching of 1894

On March 11, 1894, a group of African Americans discovered the body of a “mulatto” woman hanging from a tree about halfway between Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Marche (Pulaski County). The woman was never identified but was estimated at thirty years old. The body, according to reports, appeared to have been there for several days (the Arkansas Gazette even described the corpse as “decayed”). Around her neck was a placard reading, “If any body cuts this body down, they will share the same fate.” As the Arkansas Gazette reported, “The woman is supposed to have been lynched, but when, by whom and for what reason no one is able to state.” Indeed, although this murder is typically counted among …

Pulaski County Reported Lynching of 1889

In rural Pulaski County in 1889, three or four men were reportedly lynched for having beaten a prosperous farmer to death while robbing or attempting to rob him. However, the reports surrounding this event are very vague and sometimes contradictory. Although this event is included in many tabulations of lynching victims for the state, there may be reason for doubting whether a lynching actually occurred. National reports provide the most details about this event. For example, the December 18, 1889, report in the Indianapolis Journal, is one of many similar articles that circulated nationally. On Saturday, December 14, 1889, Henry Wright, described as a “well-to-do farmer,” was on his way to Fletcher’s store in the community of Big Maumelle when …

Quitman Male and Female College

Quitman Male and Female College was a Methodist institution of higher education that operated in Quitman (Cleburne County) from 1870 until 1898. Over its years of operation, an estimated 3,000 men and women attended the college. Quitman Male and Female College can trace its origins to Quitman Male and Female Institute (sometimes referred to as Quitman Institute), founded in 1869. Professor G. W. Stewart was the administrator of Quitman Institute, which could accommodate 200 students. It is believed that Stewart made a gift of the Quitman Institute to the Methodist Church; afterward, the school became Quitman Male and Female College. The college’s first president, the Reverend Peter A. Moses, came to lead the institution in 1871 and would go on …

Ramsey, Dave (Lynching of)

A young Black man named Dave Ramsey was lynched in Marianna (Lee County) on January 9, 1881, for allegedly having attempted to rape a white girl. This was the first recorded lynching in Lee County, where the death toll by lynching would eventually reach seventeen documented cases by 1919. At the time Ramsey was killed, the Black population of Lee County was more than double the white population, a disparity that would only increase in the coming years.   The first report of this event appeared in the Arkansas Gazette on January 13, 1881, under the headline, “A Raper Roped,” with the subtitle, “The Pine Bluff Code Works to Perfection.” This report consists of reprinting a letter, dated January 10 and …

Randolph, John (Lynching of)

On July 22, 1875, an African American man named John Randolph was shot by unknown men at Cowell’s Landing (Mississippi County). Randolph and another man were accused of the robbery and murder of Frank Williams, a German man who worked on a plantation named Dickenson’s Mills, which was owned by A. K. Hancock and located on Frenchman’s Bayou forty miles above Memphis, Tennessee. While the Arkansas Gazette published a story datelined Memphis on July 26, a July 31 story in the Osceola Times contained more complete and presumably more accurate information. According to the Times, on Monday, July 19, Williams was paid and then started out for the Shawnee Village landing, located on a plantation of that name owned by …