Entries - Time Period: Early Twentieth Century (1901 - 1940) - Starting with E

The Eagle was an anti–Ku Klux Klan (KKK) newspaper published from November 21, 1923, through 1929, one of three weeklies published in Marshall (Searcy County). With four pages and six columns, the newspaper was published on Fridays for $1 a year paid in advance. The words carried on its masthead proclaimed its opposition to the Klan, whose activity was increasing during this time: “The Idea of An Invisible Empire In a Free Republic Is Nothing Less Than Visible Nonsense.” Besides anti-Klan articles, news, and editorials, the Eagle was active in supporting anti-Klan candidates in both the Democratic and Republican parties. While anti-Klan candidates showed considerable success in the party primaries, the Klan candidates ran as Independents in the general elections …

Arkansas faced a number of opportunities and challenges in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Not only did the state introduce some significant initiatives in response to the multi-faceted reform movement known as progressivism, it also endured race riots, natural disasters, and severe economic problems. Even as it attempted to modernize its road and school systems, expand its manufacturing sector, and deal with increasing urbanization, most Arkansans continued to live in rural areas and remained largely conservative, both in their attitudes toward traditional social relations, particularly with regard to race, and in their religious orthodoxy. The tension between the need to modernize and the provincialism of rural Arkansas persisted throughout the era and inhibited meaningful change. Although the …

The East Hamilton Avenue Historic District located in Wynne (Cross County) is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century architectural styles. With construction dates ranging from 1895 to the 1950s, the houses remain some of the best examples of Queen Anne, Craftsman, Period Revival, and early Ranch-style architecture in the city. The district has sixty-three properties on East Hamilton Avenue between North Falls Boulevard and North Killough Road, as well as residences along Eldridge Court. Wynne grew up around the intersection of the Helena (Phillips County) and Memphis, Tennessee, branches of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Wynne prospered due to commercial development …

The Ebenezer Monument is located at the corner of 9th and Church streets in Mena (Polk County). It was constructed in 1936 by citizens of Mena during their fight against the perceived evils of Commonwealth College, located in rural Polk County. The monument was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 30, 1992. Commonwealth College began operating in Polk County in late 1924. The college traced its beginnings to the Newllano Cooperative Colony in Louisiana. Many of the members of the colony moved to Polk County. After operating briefly in Mena, the college purchased land thirteen miles outside of town and moved there in April 1925. The college educated students while operating as a commune where all …

Edward Walter Eberle was a U.S. Navy officer who grew up in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) before beginning a forty-seven-year career that saw him develop several innovations and rise to some of the highest naval posts. Two naval ships, the USS Eberle and the USS Admiral E. W. Eberle, have been named in his honor. Edward Walter Eberle was born on August 17, 1864, in Denton, Texas, to Joseph Eberle and Mary Stemler Eberle, who fled Fort Smith when Union troops threatened to capture the town in 1863. They returned to Fort Smith after the war, and young Edward attended school there before being appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in September 1881. After graduating, he served on the USS …

Established next to the town of Lonoke in 1917, during World War I, Eberts Field ranked second among aviation training fields maintained by the U.S. government, and it was one of the leading training centers for aviators during the war. Named for West Point graduate Captain Melchior McEwan Eberts, an early Arkansas aviator, it had an enlistment of about 1,000 cadets being trained in aviation. About 1,500 enlisted men and officers were stationed at the field. Lonoke County outbid Pulaski County to get the aviation school to locate in Lonoke, which offered 960 rent-free acres and a new railroad spur connecting the field with the Rock Island Railroad tracks. The U.S. government accepted the Lonoke offer on November 19, 1917, …

The Eclipse was a steamboat that struck a snag on the Mississippi River near Osceola (Mississippi County) on September 12, 1925; a deckhand and a passenger lost their lives in the accident. The sternwheel paddleboat that would later be named the Eclipse was built in 1901 at St. Joseph, Missouri, for Captain A. Stewart for service on the Missouri River, and was christened the City of St. Joseph. The steamer was 162 feet long and thirty-six feet wide with a five-foot draft. The vessel was later sold to the Planter’s Packet Company in Memphis, Tennessee, and later to the Lee Line, which ran it on a route between Memphis and Caruthersville, Missouri. The 1925 accident was not the first for …

The Eddie Mae Herron Center & Museum in Pocahontas (Randolph County) preserves and displays the history of slavery, civil rights, and African Americans. The building and associated grounds are located at the corner of Archer and Pratt streets. The building housing the museum was originally St. Mary’s African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and also the Pocahontas Colored School. The first evidence of St. Mary’s AME Church is ascribed to a building in the northern part of Pocahontas, around Bland and Schoonover streets. The building was purportedly erected sometime in 1865. The congregation subsequently moved the building to its current location between 1918 and 1919. The one-room wood-frame building served as both a school and as a house of worship, with …

Daniel Richmond Edwards, a native Texan, received the Medal of Honor for his actions during World War I. He also claimed a wide range of other adventures before moving to Arkansas and becoming a Lake Ouachita fishing guide. In its entry on Edwards, the Texas State Cemetery website states: “The events of Medal of Honor recipient Daniel Edwards’ life, from birth to death, are unclear. He was prone to embellishment, a trait most likely enhanced by his celebrity, and records from the time he lived are often incomplete, making many of his claims impossible to disprove and many true events difficult to confirm.” Daniel Richmond Edwards was born on April 9, 1897, in Mooreville, Texas, to Jefferson Dudley Edwards and …

Howard Samuel Eichenbaum Sr. was a practicing architect in Little Rock (Pulaski County) until his death. Eichenbaum’s importance to Arkansas may be found in his eclectic experimentation with architecture to express modernity fused with regional tradition, and in his advancement of—and advocacy for—architects in Arkansas. Howard S. Eichenbaum was born in Little Rock on April 26, 1904, the son of Ephraim Eichenbaum and Sadie Cohn Eichenbaum. He was educated in Little Rock’s public schools and earned his degree in architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1924 (there was no professional program in architecture in Arkansas until 1946). He married Helen Marion Levin; they had three sons. In 1930, Eichenbaum partnered with Frank Erhart to found Erhart and …

The El Dorado Confederate Monument is a sculpture erected in 1910 by the Henry G. Bunn Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to commemorate local men who had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Ten Confederate infantry companies were raised in Union County during the Civil War, and other men from the county served in various cavalry and artillery units. In late 1908 or early 1909, the Henry G. Bunn Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which had formed in 1907 and named itself for the colonel of the Fourth Arkansas Infantry Regiment, decided to raise a monument to the local men who had fought for the South. “Without a cent of …

The El Dorado High School Gym, located at 300 South West Avenue on the South Arkansas Community College’s West Campus at El Dorado (Union County), is an Art Deco–style recreational building designed by architect John B. Abbot and constructed in 1940 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 26, 2002. The El Dorado High School campus contained a high school building and what was then the El Dorado Junior College Building when El Dorado Special School District No. 15 began seeking funds to build a gymnasium through President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies during the Great Depression. After a five-year effort, the …

El Dorado Junior College was a public junior college open from 1928 to 1942 in El Dorado (Union County). Operating on the campus of El Dorado High School, it was established as a preparatory school by the El Dorado School District for students hoping to enter universities. The high school and El Dorado Junior College often shared equipment, instructors, laboratories, the gymnasium, and other facilities, but the two institutions remained separate in many respects. In particular, the high school mostly used the newer auditorium building for lectures, while the college mostly used the adjacent classroom building. This red brick, three-story classroom building had actually been constructed in 1905 as the high school for El Dorado. Because of its use as …

The El Dorado Race Riot that began on February 26, 1910, was reportedly sparked by a gun battle between an unidentified African-American man and three white men—Deputy Sheriff H. E. Reynolds, Oscar P. Reynolds, and Roscoe Montgomery—outside of an El Dorado (Union County) barbershop owned by black businessman Oscar “China Parker” Warren. Newspaper accounts vary widely as to the cause of the altercation, though most reports agree that there was some type of verbal interaction between the unidentified black man and the group of white men, in which the former reportedly spoke to the white men in a “very insolent manner.” The Texarkana Courier reported that “one of the white men brushed against the black man, who said in response, …

The Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States. While its deepest roots lay in the state’s commitment to white supremacy, the events in and around Elaine (Phillips County) stemmed from tense race relations and growing concerns about labor unions. A shooting incident that occurred at a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union escalated into mob violence on the part of the white people in Elaine and surrounding areas. Although the exact number is unknown, estimates of the number of African Americans killed by whites have ranged into the hundreds; five white people lost their lives. The conflict began on the night of …

Alice Sankey Ellington was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement in Arkansas, an officer of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Association, a war worker during World War I, and a frequent campaigner for suffrage across the country. She oversaw several changes in the statewide organizations that she ran, ultimately leading Arkansas women to gain the right to vote in primary elections in 1917 and win full suffrage in 1919. Alice Sankey was born in Salem, Missouri, on December 14, 1880, to Margaret Virginia Williams Sankey and William Johnson Sankey, a prospector and worker on the St. Louis, Salem and Little Rock Railroad. The second of four children, she was active in Salem’s society as a member of youth social …

Located in Fordyce (Dallas County), the Elliott House is a Craftsman-style home in a quiet residential neighborhood. Constructed around 1925, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 27, 1984. Born in Arkansas in 1887, Joe Scales Elliott was the son of William and Missouri Elliott. William owned a dry goods store in Fordyce, and the couple had six children. Joe was the fourth child and the first son in the family. While his name appears in records as Joe, Joseph, and Joel, his name is listed on his gravestone as Joe. By 1910, Joe held employment as a bookkeeper in a general merchandise store, probably the one owned by his father. William died in 1913, …

On June 13, 1919, Clyde Ellison was lynched at Star City (Lincoln County) for allegedly assaulting the daughter of a local farmer. Little is known about Clyde Ellison’s background. When he registered for the World War I draft on October 25, 1918, he was living in Florence (Drew County) and working for farmer Ernest Lytle. He was unable to give his date of birth and listed no close relatives. By June 1919, Ellison was living near Star City. According to an article in the Arkansas Gazette, it was alleged that he attempted to assault eighteen-year-old Iselle Bennett, who lived three miles from Star City. She was alone at the family home; her parents were out, and all of the hands …

Conrad Elsken was a prominent figure in Logan County for forty years. In 1883, he moved to Paris (Logan County) after he became land agent for the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. He started the Citizens Telephone Company in 1900 and served as its general manager until it was sold to Western Electric in 1928. Elsken also helped to establish the Bank of Paris, which became the First National Bank of Paris, and served as Logan County treasurer. He established a series of general stores in several Logan County towns. During World War I, he was the head of the Council of Defense for Logan County. He was on the Arkansas State Charity Board under Governor Jeff Davis and …

The steamboat Emerson was towing a “floating palace” when it struck an obstruction and sank near Osceola (Mississippi County) on October 3, 1908; one person was killed in the accident. The Emerson was a sternwheel paddleboat built as the Moline at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880. The 140-foot-long, twenty-six-foot-wide vessel was owned by Dimock, Gould & Co. of Moline, Illinois, and worked along the upper Missouri River. In the summer of 1900, the Kansas City Navigation Company acquired the Moline and converted the vessel into an excursion boat. Captain Ralph Emerson and a partner bought the steamboat in 1907 and renamed it the Emerson in February 1908, using the vessel to tow “Emerson’s Floating Palace,” a traveling entertainment venue. One newspaper …

The Emmet United Methodist Church is located at 209 Walnut Street in Emmet (Nevada and Hempstead counties). The church was constructed around 1917 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 23, 2009. Emmet was platted in 1873 when construction on the Cairo and Fulton Railroad reached the area. Most of the land where the town is located became the property of the president and vice president of the railroad in 1874. Several lots in the town were set aside for the use of schools and churches. A Methodist church was established in the area around 1855 and was used for several decades. The church received a lot in the new town for construction of a …

The England Food Riot of 1931 occurred after the drought of 1930 caused major crop failure across the region, leaving many farmers unable to feed their families. The Depression was occurring across America, and the majority of people in England (Lonoke County) and the surrounding area were destitute and desperate. As a result, approximately fifty angry farmers converged on the town of England, demanding food to feed to the starving members of their community. The crowd grew to include hundreds once in town, and the merchants, with assurances of repayment by the Red Cross, agreed to open their doors and offer all they had to avert any violence from the mob. The crowd dispersed peacefully, but the incident created a …

Clara Bertha Eno has been called Arkansas’s first lady of history. She devoted her life to researching and recording Arkansas history and collecting Arkansas archival material. Her three published works are History of the Arkansas Federation of Women’s Clubs 1897–1934 (1935), with Frances Marion (Mrs. Frederick) Hanger, Historic Places in Arkansas (1940), and History of Crawford County, Arkansas (1950). During the 1920s and 1930s, she authored numerous historical newspaper articles. In 1940, she compiled Information of Fifty-Five Revolutionary [War] Soldiers buried in Arkansas. Although never published, it has long been a mainstay for early Arkansas research. Eno was born on February 14, 1854, in Van Buren (Crawford County), the daughter of Ellen Ward Eno and Jonathan Adams Eno. Her father …

A shootout on the night of September 16, 1922, in Enon (Boone County), a sprawling, unincorporated area located east of Omaha (Boone County), left four people dead. The event known as the Enon Massacre sparked a running feud for generations to come. Although some have suggested that the Enon Massacre was the result of two groups of bootleggers in Boone County fighting over territory, most believe that the murders stemmed more from a long-running feud between various families in the area. The events that led to this gun battle started when twenty-nine-year-old Ebenezer (Eb) Badley (referred to in some newspaper accounts as “Ed Dadley”) rode to a dance near his home in Enon with his best friend, twenty-two-year-old Henry Blevins, …

Sam Epstein, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, was a merchant, planter, and civic leader in Lake Village (Chicot County) and Chicot County in the early twentieth century. Sam Epstein was born to Menasha Epstein and Malke Epstein on July 25, 1875, on a farm near Riga, Latvia, in the former Russian Empire. He was likely the second of five children. Many Eastern European Jews fled violence and legal restrictions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While Epstein’s parents likely did not immigrate, at least five of their children, including Sam, arrived in the United States between 1891 and 1900. Epstein likely arrived in New York City in May 1896. He traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, and joined an older brother, Nathan, …

The Eros School Building was constructed around 1935, probably by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief agency. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 4, 1992. Eros (Marion County), located in Prairie Township in southwestern Marion County, received its first white settlers around 1854 and had a post office by the late 1880s. The community had one of the five schools in the township in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the mid-1930s, the community received funding from one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies to build a new school. The funding likely came from the Works Progress Administration, which conducted a number of projects in the county; …

Estes-Williams American Legion Hut 61, located on Highway 62/412 in Yellville (Marion County), is a Rustic-style structure erected in 1933–1934 with assistance from the Civil Works Administration (CWA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 16, 2001. Local veterans of World War I established an American Legion post at Yellville in December 1920. Not having a meeting hall, the Legionnaires met at the Morris Hotel on Yellville’s town square until 1933, when they received assistance from the CWA for construction of a legion hall, with the CWA providing materials and labor and local sources providing a site and transportation for construction materials. Yellville’s town council donated the western half of …

The Everton School at Everton (Boone County), located on the corner of Main and Hill streets, was built in 1939 with assistance from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Depression-era federal relief program. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1992. The first school in Everton, which was founded after the Missouri and North Arkansas (M&NA) Railroad laid its lines through Boone County, was built in 1903, ten years before the town incorporated. The wood-frame building burned and was replaced with a brick building in the late 1910s. That school served until 1938, when it was razed, and materials were salvaged to go toward a new building on land donated by John Potts. The …