Lawrence County Historical Society Quarterly
Winter 1978 Volume 1 Number 1
Early Days in Lawrence County
W.E. McLeod
Lawrence County Historical Society Quarterly
Winter 1978 Volume 1 Number 1
Early Days in Lawrence County
W.E. McLeod
(Reprinted from Arkansas Historical Quarterly by permission of the author's daughter, Mrs. Ray Cunningham, Imboden.)
In the region defined in the beginning of this narrative there were four areas of settlement called after the rivers in the valleys of which they were located: The "settlement of Fourche de Thomas," centering in the town of Columbia; the "Settlement of Spring River," centering in the town of Lawrence (later Davidsonville); the "Settlement of Strawberry," centering about the mouths of Reed's Creek and Big Creek; the "Settlement of White River, " centering about the mouth of Polk Bayou, later Batesville. They are mentioned by those names in the first records of the county in 1815. Into all these settlements, settlers poured from 1811 to 1815. The names of only a few of them may be given.Into the settlement of Fourche de Thomas came the Russells, Harrises, Lindseys, Fletchers, Jarretts, Sweezes, Hoovers, McDonalds, Robinsons, Borans, Daltons, Forters and Pitmans A group of these settlers located at and near the place where the Military road crossed the Fourche de Thomas river, and made the town of Columbia. The Fletchers, Lindseys and Hoovers were
there, and there were enough others for the place to be called the town of Columbia in the first records of the county in 1815. In that year it was the rival of the town of Iawrence for the county seat site. In 1819 it had a post office with R. P. Pitman as postmaster. Somewhere there Caleb Lindsey taught a school to which he invited all children free of tuition. It was probably the first free school in Arkansas. John Young Lindsey was a Baptist preacher there. It is related of him that he would preach for two or three hours at a time and then invite his congregation home with him for dinner. He later moved to Saline county, where he is said to have built his own church house and maintained his own church. John Gould Fletcher, who lived and died and was buried there in the old Lindsey graveyard, in 1825, was the successor of the Pulaski county Fletchers.Columbia flourished until after Pocahontas was established in 1835. It was a station for the stage coaches which are said to have operated at one time over the Military road. Not many persons now know that there ever was such a town.
The beginnings of the settlement of Spring River and the town of Davidsville have already been mentioned. Many settlers located there in the period of 1811-1815 and a little later. Among them may be mentioned John T. Miller, John Davidson, Martin Armstrong, C. T. Stuart, Robert Smith, Joseph Hardin, Jr., Richard Searcy, Jansen, Staple and Stephen Chamberlain, John Lewis, Sr., and John Lewis, Jr., Jacob Jarrett, James Taylor, Polly Taylor, Benjamin Porter, William Cox and Mr. Maxwell. William Looney, David Black, the Stubblefields, Vandergrifts and Holderbys lived along Eleven Point river and were part of the Spring river settlement. Solomon Hewitt was living in 1815 on the north bank of Spring river about two miles above the mouth of Eleven Point river, and just across the river from him Nevil Wayland, Mose Robertson and a Cravens lived. A mile down the river from Imboden, James Campbell settled in 1812. Richard Murphy lived in 1815 at the place later known as the McKamey farm between Imboden and Ravenden. In the vicinity of the present town of Ravenden several settlers, among whom were Sloans, Bennetts and Wellses, were living in the period 1815-1820. In the same period, on Spring river near the present town of Willford, lived William Gray, William Willford, Stephen English, William Morgan, Robert J. Moore, Joseph Kelley, John Walker, Samuel Beastly and L. D. Dale. B. Ferguson Booth and John Garner lived at the head of Martins Creek. It has not been possible to learn the exact date when these pioneers located, but they were of the first settlers to that part of the country. They belonged at first to the settlement of Spring River though they were several miles from its center at Davidsonville.
In the settlement of Strawberry there were a goodly number of settlers immediately after 1815. William Taylor, Samuel Rayney and Jacob Fortenberry came with their families on pack horses from southeast Missouri and settled on Strawberry. Cooper's Creek and Reed's Creek, in 1816. About the same time the Finleys, Childerses, Gibsons, Hillhouses. Davises, D. Richie, George Bradley, James Allen, Napoleon Ferguson, Archibald Hodges and John B. Maxwell located in the Valley. They were in what is now Lawrence and Sharpie counties.
As previously stated, this settlement of Strawberry centered about the mouth of Reed's Creek and Big Creek. On Reed's Creek John and Jacob Hardin, John Milligan and Mr. Mobly lived. John Milligan was a Presbyterian minister of considerable note. He organized the Milligan Camp Ground congregation of Cumberland Presbyterians in 1825, which is said to have been the first organization of that denomination in the state. In this settlement near the present village of Jesup, Eli Lindsey, a Methodist preacher, is said to have lived. He is famous as the organizer of the Spring River Circuit of Methodists, the first in Arkansas, in 1815. He was a cousin of the previously-mentioned Baptist preacher, John Young Lindsey. Eli Lindsey was a rather noted character. Several good stories about him are told.
Schoolcraft, German traveler and explorer, in giving an account of his journey across the country from Polk Bayou to Potosi, Missouri, in 1819, states that he traveled thirty miles northeast from Polk Bayou and came to the south fork (Big Creek) of Strawberry river, along the margin of which were scattered about fifteen houses. including a grist mill, a whiskey distillery, a blacksmith shop and a hotel, and that he was told that there was mineral in the vicinity. He gave no name of the village. His description of it fits the place where the branch of the old Military Road crossed Big Creek near Calamine. It was as large a village as Batesville was at the time, but, strange to say, no memory or tradition of it has come down to the present. At the place where it is supposed to have been some metal pieces of machinery have been found. Big Creek or Schoolcraft would be a suitable name for the lost village.
A few very early settlers in the Settlement of White River have been mentioned. Others in the years 1815-1820 were Jonathan Magness in 1812, and Samuel Miller in 1815, both on Miller Creek, which was named for the latter; Robert Bean and James Meacham at the mouth of Polk Bayou in 1814; Abraham Ruddell near Polk Bayou in 1816; and James Trimble at Sulphur Rock in 181'7. Colonel Hartsell, Boswell, John Ringold, Henry Engles, Joseph Hardin, Sr., John Redmond, Robert Bruce, Charles Pelham, John Morgan and Fenton Noland located at Batesville by or before 1820. James F. Moore and John C. Lutteg were justices of the peace for the Settlement of White River in 1815 and Lutteg was a justice of the peace for it in 1814, while it was part of New Madrid county in Missouri Territory.
Josiah E. Shinn, in his School History of Arkansas, states that a settlement of fifteen Kentucky families was made at Greenbrier, across the river from Batesville, in 1814, and that in 1815 it increased to nineteen families. It is believed that Benjamin and Joab Hardin of the noted Kentucky-Arkansas pioneer Hardins were of those Kentucky settlers at Greenbrier. Joab Hardin is known to have been settled on White river about five miles above Batesville in 1816. It was from there he went in 1820 to represent Lawrence county in the first territorial legislature. The exact site of the Greenbrier settlement is lost and forgotten, but it was probably somewhere on Greenbrier Creek that runs into White River a few miles above Batesville. The settlement was as large as Batesville was at that time. Colonel William Stuart, James M. Kuykendall and others settled in Flat Creek valley three miles west of Powhatan in 1816.
In the foregoing pages a brief account of the early settlers and settlements in the region define in the beginning of this narrative has been given up to 1820. All this time it was under the same control as Missouri. From 1815 it was part of New Madrid county in Missouri Territory. The only officers in it then were Martin Armstrong, living near the mouth of Spring River, and John C. Lutteg, living somewhere in the vicinity of Batesville, justices of the peace for the Settlement of White River.
On January 5,1815, the legislature of the Territory of Missouri passed the act creating Lawrence county from the southern part of New Madrid county In that territory. For the next four years it was Lawrence county in Missouri Territory. During that time it was under the jurisdiction of Governor William Clark of Missouri Territory, and his first action pertaining to the government of the county was the appointment, in January,1815, of two justices of the peace for each of the four settlements of the county. The justices appointed were as follows: Richard Murphy and Perry G. Magness for the Settlement of Spring River; William Russell and William Harris for the Settlement of Fourche de Thomas;
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