Early Days in Lawrence County

W.E. McLeod

(Reprinted from Arkansas Historical Quarterly by  permission of the author's daughter, Mrs. Ray     Cunningham, Imboden.)

The territory included in the original Lawrence County was part of Louisiana, controlled by Spain and France until it passed in 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase to the control of the United States. Under that control it was successively a part of the District of Louisiana (1804-1805), the Territory of Louisiana (1805-1812), New Madrid county in Missouri Territory (1812-1815), and was Lawrence county in that territory, 1815-1819.  Its history  was closely related to that of
Missouri until 1819.  This fact should be kept in mind in studying its early history.

The original Lawrence county embraced about two-thirds of Arkansas north of the Arkansas river.  Because of its original territory thirty other counties have been formed. It has been called the "Mother of Counties." It was named Lawrence in honor of Captain James Lawrence, a naval hero of the War of 1812. The big county was not settled all over alike at the same time. One part of  it was settled several years earlier than the other, not by accident, but because of certain controlling conditions, as we shall see. The history is also the history of a considerable part of Arkansas and should, therefore, be of general interest.

The region of earliest settlement in the county may be defined as extending from the northern boundary of the present Randolph county southward and southwestward to White river.  It included in its area the lands now in Randolph, Lawrence and Sharp counties and the northern half of Independence county. It embraced all or parts of the valley of the rivers, Black, Current,
Eleven Point, Spring, Strawberry and White.  It is a region of low hills and valleys, abundantly watered by these streams and their tributaries, which are fed by many springs, furnishing many choice home sites. Altogether it was one of the fairest regions that lured settlers westward. The entire region was in the early or original Lawrence county. It was there that the first settlements were made and the government of the county first established.

Besides the natural attractiveness of the country, its early settlement was due to two other causes. One was the old travel route known at different times as the Southwest Trail and the Military Road, which extended through the region from end to end; the other was the early removal of the Indians from it.

The settlers, therefore, had but little contact with the Indians. The settlement of the region to the west was retarded for several years by Indian occupation. The advantages and allurements of the region were made known to the inhabitants of the states across the Mississippi river to the east by the stories told by occasional returning scouts and Indian agents, soon after 1800.

Josiah H. Shinn in his Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas, referring to the region defined and described in the foregoing paragraph, states that its attractiveness lured the French pioneers to it as early as 1750. He does not amplify his statement or give his authority for it. Whether it be true or not, I do not know. Probably a few bold adventures, both Spanish and French, visited the
region prior to 1800.  A well-founded tradition says that there was a French trading post on the site of Pocahontas in 1790. So far as is positively known, no  effort at settlement was made before the first decade in the last century, when a few white settlers trickled in and settled at widely separated points.

The French were the first known white settlers. The records of old land deeds at Powhatan and in the General Land Office in Washington, D.C., furnish documentary proof of their presence along Black river about 1800. One record is of a deed made in 1816 by Pierre LeMieux (Peter LeMew) to Lewis DeMunn conveying "an improvement made by the said Pierre LeMieux on Black river at a place about fifteen miles above the mouth of Current river in 1800, called by the French `Petit Baril' and by the Americans Peach Orchard'." The place is now in Clay county, and a small nearby town is still called by that name. One guesses that LeMew brought some peach seeds with him and there on his improvement planted the first peach orchard in the country.

The importance of that old record is that it helps to fix the date of the French settlement of the region. LeMew evidently was not alone in the country at that time.  He, with a few others, is credited with having settled at Clover Bend about l800, which seems to conflict with his having made an improvement at the same time at Peach Orchard, but LeMew's wife was Victoria Janis, daughter of Anthony Janis, who is known to have been settled at or near the old site of Lauratown as early as 1803.  LeMew probably gave up his improvement at Peach Orchard in order to live near his wife's people.  He lived and died and was buried at Clover Bend. He was well known in the county until his death, about 1840. He still has descendants in the county. Joe LeMew of Sedgewick and Fred Bennett of Minturn are his great-grandsons.

The large Anthony Janis family was settled at or near the old site of Lauratown, and Joseph Guignolet at or near the site of Portia in 1803 and 1802 on Spanish grants that must have been made during the Spanish control prior to  I800, when that control ended by the cession made by Spain to France. How and when Janis and Guignolet got possession of these grants is not known, and probably never will be.  Documentary proof in the General Land Office at Washington shows that in 1816 the United States recognized and confirmed their claims on the grounds of continuous occupancy from and after 1803 and 1802.

One writer has stated that the Janis family was located on Black river in 1760, but there is no other evidence, so far as I know, of the truth of the statement, unless it might be the fact that both Janis and his wife were dead in 1816 and their children grown and some of them married. At that, they made a deed conveying their inherited rights to the Anthony Janis grant to William Russell, a land speculator of St. Louis. So also did Guignolet and his wife. The Janis heirs signed the deed by mark, which may indicate that they had grown up in a country of no educational opportunities. Charles, Loot and Frank Logan were settled at or near Lauratown in 1816, but how long they had been there is not known.

 Other Frenchmen than Janis, LeMew and Guignolet settled claims along Black river, presumably at the same time. The deed records at Powhatan show that five Frenchmen, named Joseph Janis, son of Anthony Janis; John Fayas (also LaBass), son-in-law of Anthony Janis; Cola LaCombe, Jerome Mattis and Auguste Privet, owned the original settlement rights to the land on which Davidsonville was established and in 1815 sold their claim to Lewis DeMunn and Company, to be transferred to the county for a county seat site.  The Frenchmen, Lewis DeMunn and two or three brothers, settled on the creek which bears their name near Pocahontas, and the name Fourche de Maux (also de Thomas) is evidence of the French on that stream at an early date.

 Whence, when and how the Frenchmen along Black river came are questions so far unanswered and probably unanswerable at this late date.  But since we know that LeMew, Janis and Guignolet were at Clover Bend, Lauratown and Port about 1800, it is quite reasonable to believe that all the Frenchmen came together and scattered along the river from Peach Orchard in Clay county to
Clover Bend in Lawrence county.  They could have come in any one of three ways-up Black river in keel boats, down the river in boats, or on rafts from the French settlements in southeast Missouri, or overland by the old Southwest Trail.  Which way they came is anybody's guess. It is believed that the five Frenchmen from whom DeMunn and Company purchased the site of
Davidsonville were there some years in advance of other white settlers, as early almost surely as LeMew and Janis were at Clover Bend and Lauratown. It was probably their presence there that induced the Crabtrees and others about the same time to stop there, and it was this nucleus of a settlement that caused several others to locate in the vicinity from 1811 to 1815.

On to Early Day - Part Two

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