Time Period: Early Twentieth Century (1901 - 1940)

Garver, Neal Bryant

Neal Bryant Garver arrived in Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1918 to help provide engineering services for the construction of a munitions plant during World War I. As the Arkansas State Highway Department’s first bridge engineer, Garver also led the design of more than 2,000 bridges from 1921 to 1950, helping to modernize the state’s roadways by adding river crossings. In 1919, Garver started what became the state’s largest engineering firm, which began by providing structural engineering services for Little Rock High School (later called Little Rock Central High), North Little Rock High School, the Pulaski County Jail, and many other structures. Neal Garver was born on February 17, 1877, in Lee County, Iowa, near the Mississippi River, to the …

Gatewood House

The Gatewood House, designed in the Shingle architectural style, is gambrel-roofed home located in Malvern (Hot Spring County). Constructed in 1905, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1992. The house was constructed by Matthew and Hannah Duffie for their daughter, Annie Sinney Duffie Gatewood. Amie married Edwin Lee Gatewood in Dallas County in 1893, and the couple had three children between 1894 and 1902. Edwin died in Beebe (White County) on April 14, 1905, and Annie lived in the home with her children, Anita, Edwin, and Estell. She died on March 2, 1947, and is buried with her husband in Malvern. The home is located at 235 Pine Bluff Street and faces north. …

Gathings, Ezekiel Candler “Took”

Ezekiel Candler “Took” Gathings represented Arkansas’s First Congressional District for thirty years (1939–1969). Throughout this period, he championed the interests of the neo-plantation elite who dominated politics and society in that region and was one of a powerful bloc of conservative Southern Democrats who frequently fought against social reform legislation introduced by more liberal members of their party. “Took” Gathings was born the youngest of eight children of Melville W. Gathings and Virgie Garner Gathings on November 10, 1903, in Prairie, Mississippi. As an infant, his parents referred to him as “Sugar,” which his two-year-old brother pronounced “Tooker”; hence, the nickname that eventually supplanted his given name. His family later moved to Earle (Crittenden County), where he graduated from high …

Gay Oil Company Building

Located at 300 Broadway in Little Rock (Pulaski County), the Gay Oil Company Building is an example of an early twentieth-century Neoclassical-style office building. Constructed in 1925 and covering three lots, the building served as the headquarters for the Gay Oil Company. The business was founded to sell kerosene and various lubricating oils but expanded into the sale of gasoline and various items related to automobiles. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 2017. Thomas Jefferson Gay organized the Richardson-Gay Oil Company in Texas in 1903. Focused on refining oil, Gay sold his holdings in the business in 1905 and moved to Little Rock, where he founded the Gay Oil Company in 1907. …

General Robert E. Lee Monument

The General Robert E. Lee Monument in Marianna (Lee County) is a commemorative sculpture erected in 1910 by the D. C. Govan Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to remember local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and to honor the man for whom Lee County was named. The Arkansas General Assembly created Lee County in April 1873 from parts of Phillips, Monroe, St. Francis, and Crittenden counties at the behest of William Furbush, an African-American Republican legislator representing part of Phillips County. It is likely that he chose to name the county after the Confederate leader of the Army of Northern Virginia to gain favor with the politically powerful Democrats in …

Geographical Center of Arkansas Marker

The Geographic Center of Arkansas Marker was dedicated on April 12, 1936, as part of the state’s first centennial celebration. The marker was placed at a spot designated by the Arkansas Department of Transportation as the physical center of the state on Highway 5, then called the “Hot Springs Highway.” The presiding officers who participated in the dedication ceremony were Mrs. Charles H. Miller and Jeanne Weinmann, both representing the Colonel Samuel Cherry chapter of the Arkansas Society of the Daughters of American Colonists in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Little Rock branch had been formed just four years before on January 29, 1932. That chapter was also responsible for a number of other historical markers across the state between 1928 …

George (Lynching of)

On May 29, 1925, an African American man identified only as George was shot by a mob near Camden (Ouachita County) for allegedly attempting to attack a white woman in nearby Louann (Ouachita County). George, originally from Little Rock (Pulaski County), was working in the oil fields that had sprung up around Camden in the early 1920s. According to a later report, early on May 29, George had come to the home of a widow near Louann, where she lived with her three children. He approached her on the porch and said he had been watching her for some time, “waiting to get [her] alone some time, and now’s good enough.” He grabbed her, but she managed to escape. At …

George Berry Washington Memorial

The George Berry Washington Memorial, located near Earle (Crittenden County), is the burial place of a man born a slave who rose to become an African-American social leader and one of the largest landowners in the county in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. George Washington Jr. was born on December 25, 1864, the son of George Washington and Hanna Washington. His parents were both born in Kentucky and were possibly the slaves of James G. Berry, one of Crittenden County’s largest landowners, who moved to Arkansas from Kentucky as early as 1833. In May 1883, Washington—who now went by the name George Berry Washington—married eighteen-year-old Ella Rostelle. They had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1886 and a second daughter, …

Gerig, William Lee

William Lee Gerig was a civil engineer working on railroads and dams in both the United States and abroad, including his service as chief engineer for the construction of the Panama Canal. By the end of his career, he had consulted on every dam built in the United States from 1923 to 1938. William Gerig was born on March 25, 1866, in Boone County, Missouri, the son of Swiss immigrants Francis Joseph and Carolyn Degan Gerig. William Gerig’s grandfather Degen came to America in the early eighteenth century to practice civil engineering. His father, Francis Joseph, assisted in the construction of the Suez Canal before settling in Missouri. As a young boy, the instruments that surveyors used fascinated Gerig, and …

German National Bank

From its opening in 1875 to its closing in 1930, the German National Bank (under a variety of names) was considered a financial pillar of Little Rock (Pulaski County) and central Arkansas. Saluted by the Arkansas Gazette as the “leading bank of the state” in 1876, it grew to become the largest bank in the state, largely through bank consolidations in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In early 1875, the German Savings Bank was organized by Charles Penzel. A prominent financier, Penzel came to the United States from Bohemia in 1857 and served as the bank’s first president. The business and fixtures of the bank were purchased from George Brodie and Sons, which had gone out of business …

Gibb, Frank Wooster

Frank W. Gibb was a prolific architect whose many designs include those of iconic Arkansas county courthouses and a pair of National Historic Landmarks. Frank Wooster Gibb was born on February 24, 1861, in Rutland, Vermont, to Edward Gibb and Isabella Emerson Gibb. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where the elder Gibb established a carriage-furnishings business, then to Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1871 when the business was destroyed in the great Chicago fire. Frank Gibb graduated from the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (which eventually became the Missouri University of Science and Technology) at Rolla in 1881 and then returned to the Arkansas capital to establish a business as a mining consultant and assayer, becoming a member …

Gibson, Henry C.

Henry C. Gibson is credited with developing a box-style turkey call that eventually was called the Gibson Turkey Box. This unique call had the distinction of being the first box-style turkey call patented in the United States. The box and attached lids made realistic calls, and the device was easy to carry. Henry Gibson was born near Dardanelle (Yell County) on September 18, 1848. Little is known about his family and childhood. Gibson worked in a small drug store in Dardanelle when he was around twenty years old. On December 18, 1870, Gibson married Alice Hawkins. Together they raised three daughters and one son. Following his wife’s death, Gibson married Lettie Dodge on October 14, 1891, and they had one …

Gibson, J. W. (Murder of)

On December 23, 1920, in what one newspaper called “One of the most dreadful tragedies that the Negroes of the City of Helena has [sic] ever been called on to witness,” Professor Jacob William (J. W.) Gibson was killed by a night watchman in Helena (Phillips County). Depending on how the word “lynching” is interpreted, this may have been an incident of police brutality, or Professor Gibson may in fact have been lynched. The Arkansas Gazette filed no report on Gibson’s death. The only national coverage appears to be a rather belated report in the Dallas Express, an African-American newspaper published in Texas. Not much is known about Gibson. According to the Express, not only did Gibson teach in Helena, …