BREAD!

A entire chapter in the forthcoming AROUND THE COUNTY.

It’s easy to take bread for granted, the first thing grabbed off supermarket shelves as people prepare for any apocalypse. And not only bread, but other products of wheat flour, everything from biscuits to pasta. But the county’s early pioneers did not have supermarkets from which to obtain bread or flour, they didn’t even have grist mills to produce it. And they had to grow the wheat!

Laboring over grinding stones with hand pestles, pioneers cleared land, plowed, planted, harvested, winnowed, and stored wheat (and other grains, especially corn) before turning their energies to building mills. Big grinding stones were turned first by harnessed mules or horses then by water power as streams were channeled to turn big mill wheels. Millwrights had to know their business, not only in the methods of capturing and directing a suitable flow of water but also in the construction of the wheels and the many mechanisms of the operation.

At first, Fayetteville settlers had to travel to Natural Dam to find a mill, then to Evansville. It wasn’t until 1836 that Fayetteville gained its first local mill, and twelve more would follow. Local mills would continue their important work for nearly a century before mechanization and corporate farms would undermine their profitability, thus ending a long mainstay of the local economy.

The Family Histories of Breckenridge, Williams, Morrow,

Smelser, Andrews, Clark, Hall, Massey, and Eubanks

Plus Lovelady and Futrell

in Greene County, Arkansas

Combining generations of family history and up-to-date genealogical information, this collection of ancestry information tracks a group of families which settled in Greene County, Arkansas in the first two decades of statehood. Family trees, deed records, census records, and other official records create a factual framework for personal narratives and vintage photographs, creating a fascinating archive of information for any descendant of these families as well as any fan of local history.

Each marriage between these pioneer families brought certain talents and backgrounds to the next generation. They farmed the rich land of Crowley’s Ridge and other Greene County areas, weathered the storms of poverty and loss, and suffered the losses to sickness and war. Yet they survived, and their great-grandchildren entered the twentieth century determined to continue as they had begun.

Now the 21^st century brings us the internet with its vast collection of historical documents, making it finally possible to reflect on their adventures and aspirations. The story of these families is the story of thousands of us descended from them. Includes an extensive ‘vocabulary’ of downhome sayings.

Paperback $14.95, Amazon

The Violent End of the Gilliland Boys

Christmas Day horse races 1872, Middle Fork Valley. Bud Gilliland waits, eager for another chance at Newton Jones. Only this time, after two years of sparring, Newton gallops up in a cloud of dust, lifts his Spencer rifle to his shoulder to find Bud in his sights, and pulls the trigger, sending Bud to a well-earned grave.

Determined to wreak vengeance on his little brother’s killer, William Jefferson “Jeff” Gilliland takes control of a posse meant to bring Newton Jones to justice. But Jeff’s plan for the posse to kill “every last son of a bitch” goes horribly wrong and brings indictments for murder against Jeff and the rest of his posse.

Before the curtains closed in 1890 on these descendants of West Fork pioneers J. C. and Rebecca Gilliland, two other sons and a grandson would die violent deaths while yet another grandson serves hard time for murder.

What was it about the Gillilands?

This recounting of the family tracks their ancestry, their pioneer years on untamed land, and the hard work that made them one of the wealthiest families in Washington County, Arkansas. A fascinating tale of brash ego, brave gallantry, and plain old bad luck.

Paperback, $ 9.95, Amazon

The West Fork Valley: Its environs and settlement before 1900

Conrad Yoes, pictured here, was among the earliest settlers along the West Fork valley, arriving around 1822. The extended Yoes family, recent immigrants from Germany, sent down strong roots and became an influential part of county history. Conrad became nicknamed as “Coon Rod” because of his willingness to cross high water creeks on a log in order to carry out his preaching mission. According to a descendant,

“He started on his circuit one day, came to the creek, the ford could not be crossed, so he found where someone had felled a tree across the stream so he “cooned” it and so got that nickname.

In another of Bert Yoes recollections about his grandfather, he said that Conrad was a “small man” who could “conjure warts and stop blood flow.”

Conrad Yoes’ son, Jacob “Black Jake” Yoes served in Union forces during the Civil War then as sheriff of Washington County. With the timber boom that came with the opening of the railroad in 1882, Jacob turned his energy to building a business empire with mercantiles at multiple stops between Fayetteville and Van Buren. The two-story brick store he built at West Fork remains standing today. In 1889, Jacob became a legendary U. S. Marshal working for Hanging’ Judge Parker at Fort Smith, allegedly the inspiration for John Wayne’s famous role in the movie “Big Jake.”

The story of the Yoes family is just one of many documented in these pages, all of them building lives and rich histories along the river valley, all of it fascinating to anyone interested in the 19th century settlement of Washington County.

The West Fork of White River created the West Fork valley and continues to shape it today. Streams, creeks, and springs drain down the steep hillsides to form the river and carve this particular place on Earth. This book is about that valley, how it formed over millions of years, how Nature filled it with plants and animals, how Native people found sustenance and shelter here. And then the immigrants came, arriving from the eastern seaboard of the early colonies, from Europe and beyond. Within these pages are the stories of the first settlers here, the roads and towns they made, the war they fought, and their paths to survival through the end of the 19^th century.

Subsequent chapters describe the mills, churches, and early roads as well as the neighbor-to-neighbor conflict of the Civil War. Stagecoaches hurtled down the valley roads, later supplanted by the iron horse with the completion of the railroad tunnel at Winslow. A chapter on crime reveals shootouts, knife fights, and barn burning. Histories of Winslow, Brentwood, Woolsey, West Fork, and Greenland outline their origins and heydays.

One of several 5 star reviews: “The research involved to create such a great history is very obvious. I wanted to know more about my home which was built in 1840 and the family behind many of the objects found on the property. Ms. Campbell’s book answered many of those questions and helped me develop a treasured sense of place. We seem to have lost our appreciation for where we came from and how we created communities. So great to see Campbell’s thorough research and ability to bring the past alive.”

Get your copy today at Amazon.com or at the Headquarters House offices of the Washington County Historical Society.

A little murder with your lemonade?

What could be more interesting summer reading than murder stories from the 1800s? This collection of fifty stories cover the earliest years of Arkansas statehood, Civil War atrocities, and a shoot-out on Fayetteville’s town square. All the murders occurred in Washington County Arkansas, a mild-mannered place by any other account.

Here’s just one chapter:

On an icy Wednesday January 24, 1872, in a field on the Rev. Riley Jones’ place near Black Oak in eastern Washington County, two young men set about the task of feeding livestock, Riley’s 21-year-old son James Cornelius ‘Nealy’ Jones and Henry Durham, age unknown. Durham had been taken in by the Jones family and lived there as part of the family.

As young men often do, the two exchanged jokes, lies, and dares as they pitched hay off the wagon. According to later accounts, Jones was ribbing Durham pretty hard about some trivial matter.[1] Before either of them realized how or when, the mood changed. The jokes became insults and the dares became threats. Biting cold set their teeth on edge as they faced each other. Tempers ignited and before anyone paused to think, Durham charged Jones with the pitchfork. One of the tines pierced his coat and went straight to his heart.

Suddenly young ‘Nealy’ Jones lay dying on the field as Henry stood over him watching in disbelief.

Despite Durham’s efforts to resuscitate him, Jones did not revive. Roused by Durham’s shouts, Riley Jones came running to his dying son. But it was too late. They carried the body inside while someone went for the township constable.

The Reverend Riley Jones and his wife Nancy had arrived in Washington County between 1850 and 1860 to settle near his three younger brothers Clairborne, Enoch, and James Jones, all natives of Hawkins County, Tennessee who had arrived in Washington County some years earlier. The descendants of all four brothers would mingle in county records forever after. [2]

Riley took up residence in the Middle Fork Valley near Carter’s Store. Age fifty-five in 1860, Riley and his wife Nancy Bailey had gained eleven children over the years of their marriage including nine daughters and two sons. The couple had suffered their share of tragedy. One daughter died in infancy. Another daughter Eliza Tabitha died unexpectedly June 21, 1861, six days after giving birth to her fifth child Benjamin Calhoun. Eliza’s husband, Pleasant Riley Jones (probably her first cousin),[3] remained to grieve with their children: Jesse 13, John 11, David 9, and William 7—as well as the newborn Benjamin.

With war breaking out all around, in the summer of 1862, Pleasant joined up with the 1^st Cavalry Regiment Arkansas (C.S.A.), leaving his children in the care of Eliza’s parents Riley and Nancy.[4] According to family records, his unit met Union forces November 1 at Cross Hollow. Pleasant was killed in a skirmish on November 29.[5] Also lost that fateful year was Absolom Abraham Jones, the older of the two Jones sons, who died at age 27 while engaged in Civil War combat in Northwest Arkansas.

With the deaths of Eliza and now Pleasant, Eliza’s parents Riley and Nancy Jones became the caretakers of their four orphaned grandchildren. For the next five years, the family suffered the deprivations of continued guerrilla warfare that plagued north Arkansas even after the war ended. But in August 1871, they celebrated the promise of a new marriage when the baby of the family, James Cornelius “Nealy” Jones, joined with Matilda Lewis, the lovely young daughter of George Washington Lewis who operated the Lewis Mill on the Middle Fork of White River.

Now a freak encounter had ended Cornelius’ life. In disbelief, the Reverend Riley Jones controlled his rage and grief as he waited for the constable to remove Henry Durham from the premises. At least with the murderer in custody, he would gain justice for his son’s premature and tragic death. Finally the constable arrived and took the shaken Henry Durham to the local lock-up.

Call it fate. Call it karma. What happened next would be the only semblance of justice in this case. The next morning, the constable left a young man named Lewis, probably a relative of Matilda, in charge of the prisoner while he went for his breakfast. Sensing an opportunity and facing possible execution by hanging, Henry Durham made a run for it. Ignoring Lewis’ demand to halt, Durham pursued his escape. Prepared with a loaded weapon, Lewis fired, striking Durham with a fatal gunshot.

Research has not discovered whether Henry Durham was in any way connected to the naming of the nearby community of Durham. In fact, the only record of this name other than the few facts noted so far is a listing of his name in the 1869 personal property tax records for Washington County. Of further note, a few versions of the story claim that Henry Durham killed Nealy Jones with a knife rather than a pitchfork. But dead is dead and both men found their end on back-to-back frigid January days.

‘Nealy’ Jones was buried beside his brother Absolom and his sister Eliza at Mt. Zion Cemetery. Henry Durham was buried at Reese Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

Finally, a post script about Matilda Lewis Jones. After only five happy months of married life, the young woman had become a widow. In August 1873, eighteen months after the death of Cornelius, Matilda married again, this time to Cornelius’ cousin William Newton Jones, the son of the Rev. Clairborne Jones, Riley Jones’ brother. Newton Jones will figure prominently in another murder story in Chapter 21.

An interesting story about Matilda involved a recently freed slave named Mary Ann. At the end of the Civil War, slaveholders were required to release all slaves. The owner of Mary Ann wanted to sell her despite the new law. Seeing the value in a young mixed race girl of about fifteen years at the time, the owner expected to receive a thousand dollars for her.

Hearing of Mary Ann’s fervent wish not to be sold, Matilda’s father George Lewis offered Mary Ann work at his household if she wished to leave her former ‘owner.’ (Some rumors alleged the ‘owner’ was in fact her father. Begetting mixed race children upon slaves was a common practice among some slave owners. The act was seen as ‘bettering’ the negro race.) This intervention of Lewis in facilitating her ‘escape’ caused a permanent rift between him and the former slave’s ‘owner’.

Mary Ann eagerly accepted Mr. Lewis’ offer and the young woman flourished in her new home. About five years later, in January 1874, Mary Ann became sick and died. With travel impossible in the icy weather, Matilda contributed her twice-used wedding dress as a burial shroud for Mary Ann, who was then laid to rest in an unmarked grave at the east end of Reese Cemetery.[6]

Get your copy of Murder in the County at Amazon.com

~~~

[1] Fayetteville Democrat January 27, 1872

[2] More on the Jones family in Appendix of Selected Family Histories, Jones, p 394

[3] Pleasant’s father, John Jones, was born in 1789 at Hawkins County, Tennessee. Eliza’s father Riley Jones was born in 1805 in the same county.

[4] The 1^st Cavalry Regiment, Arkansas State Troops (1861), was an Arkansas cavalry regiment during the American Civil War. The regiment was organized at Camp Walker near Harmony Springs, Benton County, Arkansas. The regiment was officially designated as the Third Regiment (Cavalry), Arkansas State Troops by the State Military Board but was designated as the 1^st Arkansas Cavalry by Brigadier General Nicholas Bartlett Pearce, Commander, 1^st Division, Provisional Army of Arkansas. The regiment is referred to as “Carroll’s Regiment” in contemporary accounts.

[5] Family records may be in error here. A large Confederate encampment at Cross Hollow was left in smoldering ruins before a Union advance in February 1862. With the Battle of Pea Ridge in early March 1862, Confederates retreated south from Benton County. With a death date of November 29, 1862, Pleasant Jones may have died in the run-up to the Battle of Prairie Grove, perhaps in the November 28 Battle of Cane Hill.

[6] Coley, Cheri. “The Rest of the Story…Sort of:” Washington County Arkansas Genealogical Society newsletter June 2005. http://wcags.org/?page_id=784

Jesse Mumford Gilstrap – Millwright, Inventor, and Union Officer

This article won awards from both the Washington County Historical Society and the Arkansas Historical Association competitions in 2018 and 2019.

In 1852, Jesse Mumford Gilstrap settled in Washington County, Arkansas, with his wife and three children. He had ventured to the county earlier; his first child was born here in 1848. An adventurous and passionate young man, in 1850 Gilstrap had trekked westward to join the gold rush while his wife awaited him at her family home near Carthage, Missouri. Back from his adventure and a few dollars richer, he returned to Washington County where he immediately invested some of his earnings in a partnership in one of the county’s earliest mills. In 1856, took full ownership. Then as the winds of war heightened, Jesse spoke out on behalf the Union cause. In 1862, he gathered a company of fellow patriots to form the first company of the 1^st Arkansas Cavalry. Jesse went on to serve in the state senate before his untimely death in 1869.

Jesse’s family was among the second wave of settlers to arrive in Washington County. His father Isaac Gilstrap, a native of North Carolina, was the fifth generation of Gilstraps in America, descended from Thomas Gilstrap of Nottinghamshire, England who immigrated to the colonies around 1695. The Gilstraps moved west as the frontier opened, first to North Carolina, then Tennessee where Isaac married Lockey Davis in 1822. After their family grew to include Jesse and several additional children, the Gilstraps homesteaded at Neosho, Missouri, between 1836 and 1844.

At age 21 in 1845, Jesse married Mary Ann Davidson at Carthage, Missouri. He and Mary Ann gained their first child Elizabeth in 1848 during a brief period when the couple first lived in Washington County. But news of gold in California caused Jesse to return his wife and daughter back to her Missouri family for safekeeping while he struck out to seek his fortune. At the time of the January 1850 census for Neosho, Missouri, Mary Ann age 19 and the couple’s one-year-old daughter Elizabeth lived at the Davidson family home while Jesse, age 26, labored in the gold fields of Greenwood Valley, El Dorado County, California.

The eight census pages which tally the Greenwood Valley includes a total of 336 people, among which are three black men, two women, and 331 white men. They came from every state in the nation as well as Canada, Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, and Holland. Occupations included baker, attorney, four merchants, a saloon keeper, a hotelier, physician, and butcher. Like most of the men enumerated, Jesse named his occupation as miner.

At the start of the gold rush, Greenwood didn’t exist. The area was known as Long Valley, a remote area of northeast California in the Sierra Foothills. The location sits over the northwest portion of the so-called Mother Lode where early arrivals found nuggets literally lying in plain view. The place quickly gained a torrent of hopeful newcomers.[1] By the spring of 1850, John Greenwood had established a trading post soon followed by a butcher shop and a general store. By 1851, Greenwood hosted two theatres, a number of restaurants, fourteen stores, a brewery, several hotels, and blacksmiths. After dark and in bad weather, miners lived in canvas tents or rough cabins. But in every hour of daylight, they pursued their hopes of finding free gold or rich quartz veins on their claims. The men were tight-lipped with the census taker about the value of their claim. Gilstrap admitted to an average daily value of his mining efforts of four dollars, an amount typical of miner income which ranged from two dollars up to a rare nine or eleven dollars per day.[2]

On December 1, 1851, Jesse M. Gilstrap returned home. He disembarked from the brig Morning Star at New Orleans, having traveled from San Juan Del Norte, Nicaragua along with 175 other passengers, presumably most of them men returning from California. This cut-across route avoided the long journey around the tip of South American or its alternative, the grinding cross-country trek over mountains and desert. The cut-through followed a new path across Central America, a journey starting at San Carlos, Nicaragua said to take about three weeks by use of mules, a steamboat ride across a lake to the mouth of the San Juan River, and then by ship north across the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. In the ship manifest, Jesse named his occupation as cabinet maker.[3]

Gilstrap gained sufficient funds during his stay in California not only to book passage for the swiftest route home, which cost between $200 and $400, but also to invest—within six weeks of his return—in an ongoing milling operation in south Washington County established by William H.H. Nott by 1838 and sold to Eleazar Pelphrey in 1845.[4] Jesse brought his immediate family to live here along with the rest of the extended Isaac Gilstrap family. Washington County, Arkansas, tax records show the first payment of real estate taxes by both Isaac and his son Jesse occurred in 1852.

On January 12, 1852, Gilstrap paid Pelphrey for a half interest in the operating grist and sawmill, “one half interest…in a certain tract…formerly owned by Wm. H. H. Nott in the SE SW 23-14-30…including mill.”[5] This location on the West Fork of White River was about five miles south of modern-day West Fork.

He didn’t choose an easy livelihood. Milling operations in those times involved the construction of a large wooden mill wheel and the assembly of multiple moving parts and gears to rotate the grindstones as well as sawblades and other devices needed in the milling of grain and lumber. The West Fork of White River suffers the random violence of a river swollen by heavy rain. In a narrow valley with steep hills on either side, the river reaches flood stage relatively quickly. In some years far worse than others, downpours rush down the tributary streams and across the valley to overrun the river banks. In times of heavy rain, torrents of brown water sweep along adjacent pastures and woodland, tearing trees from the banks and sending them downstream like battering rams. Perched along the streambed where the river flow could turn its wooden wheel, mill wheels could be wrecked in the onslaught.

But Jesse Gilstrap weathered such storms. His mill provided meal and flour for farmers bringing their harvests and sawed rough timber into usable boards. He saw to the welfare of his family as well as participating in community affairs. Evidently an ambitious and outgoing young man, Gilstrap was elected justice of the peace to represent West Fork Township in 1855. On June 28, 1856, he gained full ownership of the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 23, Township 14, Range 30 North, deeded from Pelphrey to Gilstrap for the amount of $250 and described specifically as the “sawmill on the West Fork of White River…formerly owned by Wm. H. H. Nott.”[6] The location under Nott had served as the first post office for the West Fork Township. Subsequently, the post office became known as Gilstrap’s Mill.

Approaching his mill enterprise with a background in carpentry, and with his brother Thomas nearby who continued to earn his livelihood as a cabinet man, Jesse Gilstrap sought ways to improve saw mill operations. Boards from his mill supplied carpenters Oren and Henry Rieff for building projects in Fayetteville and the surrounding region including the pre-Civil War educational facilities Ozark Institute and Arkansas College.

But Gilstrap wasn’t resting on his laurels in operating the mill. In August 1857, Gilstrap patented a machine for whetting plane bits with the U. S. Patent Office.[7] Smoothly finished boards would have been a high priority for the growing region and planing rough-cut hardwood would have presented a regular challenge in maintaining sharp bits. Gilstrap’s patent application included a detailed description of the machine and its parts.

No. 17,965. – Jesse M. Gilstrap, of Washington county, Ark.—Improved Machine for Whetting Plane Bits.—Patent dated August 11, 1857.—The bit to be whetted is inserted within the bit holder H, and a reciprocating motion being given to pitman I, the bit holder is operated within the ways H, and the edge of bit T is whetted on the stone M, while the spring rod I exerts an even pressure upon the friction roller K and bit holder H.

The next year, in 1858, Gilstrap purchased an additional seventy acres adjacent to his mill property. Increasingly, however, matters of national politics drew his attention. Despite the fact that his father Isaac was a Confederate sympathizer, Jesse spoke publicly on behalf of the Union. As animosity intensified between opposing sides, he and other Union supporters increasingly came under attack. Whether for political reasons or due to competition from Nott’s new mill at Woolsey, by the time of the 1860 census, Jesse had moved his family to the “Narrows” in Crawford County, a location just east of modern Mountainburg and about twenty miles south of his mill site in Washington County. He built a mill at the Narrows as well—the census names his occupation as millwright with property valued at $1,500. His brother Thomas Gilstrap and family lived next door where Thomas worked as a cabinet maker. On the other side of Jesse’s residence, his sister Nancy and her husband Reuben Burrows resided with their children.

After Arkansas declared its allegiance with the Confederacy in May 1861, Jesse Gilstrap and other Union supporters suffered increasing belligerence. Confederate commanders were ordered to hunt down Union sympathizers. Many men of similar circumstance ended up spending the winter of 1861-62 in the caves of south Washington County. By June 1862 and after arrest and confinement under Confederate watch at Fort Smith, Gilstrap “took with him seventeen recruits to the federal army at Cassville, Missouri. When Colonel Larue Harrison obtained leave to organize an Arkansas regiment, Jesse Gilstrap raised the first field company. He was made a captain in Company D and his brother Thomas John was made first lieutenant in Company A. Their brothers Benjamin and Wesley also joined along with their brother-in-law Reuben Burrows.”[8]

Gilstrap gained prominent mention in the 1863 publication of Lieutenant Colonel Albert Webb Bishop, provost marshal of Fayetteville, entitled Loyalty on the Frontier: Sketches of Union men in the South-west.[9] Bishop provides personal and official accounts of early war action in south Missouri and northwest Arkansas. Gilstrap’s activities are often described in the company of his fellow officer Thomas Wilhite, also of south Washington County. Bishop’s narrative illustrates the hazards of the times.

Recruiting in Arkansas for the Union Army was at that time a perilous undertaking. Loyal men avowed their principles at the hazard of life, and the greatest difficulty to be overcome was in getting recruits to the rendezvous of the regiment for which enlistments were being made.

…By arrangement, [Thomas] Wilhite and Gilstrap, having for recruiting purposes gone into different neighborhoods, were to meet at the house of one Spencer Bullard, on Fall Creek, in Washington county, and there concert measures for the removal, or getting northward rather, of their recruits. For some reason or other, Gilstrap had departed on Wilhite’s arrival, and the latter having with him twenty-eight men, determined to retire into the White River hills and Boston Mountains, and collection from the adjoining settlements still other men who were anxious to get away, bide his time for departure.

Gilstrap and Wilhite enlisted on the same day, suggesting they had made the risky journey together to Union lines in southern Missouri. Their regiment would later become known as the “Mountain Feds” for their regular patrols in seeking out Confederate guerillas preying on families known to be Union sympathizers. The regiment would earn a reputation for their ability to negotiate the rough Ozark country.

However, the trauma of frontline warfare plunges its horror deep into a man’s soul. If not in battle, Gilstrap’s first war terror may have occurred as he learned of the death of his brother Lieutenant Thomas John Gilstrap. Family records state that Thomas died while recruiting on November 3, 1862. One family account states that he approached what he thought was a Loyalist home, asked for a drink, and was given poisoned buttermilk. He fell dead in the front yard.[10] Another account states that he died of pneumonia at Cross Hollow.[11]

A month later, the First Arkansas Cavalry and in particular Company D experienced its first full-scale battle at Prairie Grove. But the first test of the troops came in an incident the day before the battle when the company came under unexpected attack. In the early hours of the morning on December 7, 1862, the day of the Battle of Prairie Grove, the 7^th Missouri as well as the 6^th Missouri, under command of Major Eliphalet Bredett, camped south of Prairie Grove at the junction of the Cane Hill, Cove Creek, and Fayetteville roads after an exhausting forced march south from Missouri. They had been ordered south to reinforce Union General James G. Blunt in his campaign to seize control of Northwest Arkansas.

While feeding and resting their horses, the Missourians were unaware that Col. Emmett MacDonald’s Confederate cavalry brigade had spotted them. […] Before the Confederates could strike, a company of the 8^th Missouri, also en route to reinforce Blunt, passed through the resting Missouri and Arkansas cavalrymen and swept on down the road. They were almost through the heavily wooded lane when MacDonald’s Confederates fired upon them.

The volley from an unseen foe created panic. The remnant of the company stampeded back through Bredett’s startled horsemen. Ordering his men to mount and form a line of battle, the major had hardly completed his task when the Confederates thundered down on them. Desperately fighting, Bredett rallied his men and formed line again before he went down under the charging horsemen. The retreat was sounded, and it was every man for himself.[12]

… A considerable number of the Arkansas 1^st Cavalry came rushing by at the top of the speed of their horses some without hats or coats in fact they were perfectly panic stricken and rushed in pell mell haste past us. … [The foe] had made a sudden dash upon the Arkansas Cavalry who were ignorant of the close proximity of the enemy [and] were taken completely by surprise and their entire [baggage] train captured …

… Troops of the First Arkansas Cavalry (U.S.) and Seventh Missouri Cavalry (U.S.) fled in disorder after an initial confrontation with Confederate horsemen between Fayetteville and Prairie Grove. Herron stopped the rout by shooting a Union cavalryman out of his saddle. [William L. Shea, Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009) 137-43.][13]

Brigadier General Francis J. Herron shared joint command of Union forces with Brigadier General Blunt in the Battle of Prairie Grove, leading approximately 9,200 men against about 11,000 Confederate forces under Major General Thomas C. Hindman. Technically a stalemate, the battle resulted in Confederate withdrawal due to lack of supplies, leaving Union forces to seize control in the region.[14] It is not known if Captain Jesse Gilstrap or Company D were among those caught off guard by McDonald’s attack.

The winter of 1862-63 was one of the coldest on record. The Arkansas River at Fort Smith froze with ice thick enough for troops and supply wagons to pass over. Men suffered illness from exposure to the cold, many of them dying in camp.[15] Furthering Jesse’s ordeal, in January 1863, he suffered the loss of his brother Benjamin, serving as a corporal in Company D. Benjamin went home to West Fork to die of pneumonia.

Throughout the coming months after federal forces gained control of Northwest Arkansas following the Battle of Prairie Grove, various companies of the Arkansas 1^st Cavalry rode east into Carroll and Madison counties and south into Crawford, Franklin, and Johnson counties in pursuit of guerrilla Confederates. Under constant psychological stress, men involved in these encounters engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, sometimes forced to patrol on foot.

During this time, the regiment escorted wagon trains, conducted patrols, and skirmished with guerrillas on an almost daily basis. These activities took a tremendous toll on the regiment. Horses were especially vulnerable and were disabled at an alarming rate in the rough terrain of the Ozarks. In its first eighteen months of service, the First Arkansas received 2,600 horses. In July 1864, there were only 104 horses available for the 538 men present for duty. This chronic shortage of horses frequently forced the First Arkansas to conduct scouting and patrol duty on foot, a situation that placed the regiment at a considerable disadvantage when combating well-mounted guerrillas.[16]

Jesse Gilstrap’s military files provide the following service record:

July 1862, Present
December 1862, Present Fayetteville Ark. In command of Co D as Provost Guard[17] at Fayetteville
Jan 1863 to Mar 1863. Present for duty Fayetteville, Ark.
April 1863. Present. Flat Creek, Barry Co., Mo.
May 1863. Present Cassville Mo on special duty. Prov Marshal
June 1863 to July 1863. Present Cassville, Mo.
Aug 1863. Present Cassville, Mo. Detached service comd’g post, Cassville
Sept 1863 to Oct 1863, Present, Fayetteville Ark
Nov 1863 Present Fayetteville, Ark. In arrest[18]

In what must have come as a shock to Jesse, in October 1863, he received notice of his dismissal from active duty on charges outlined in a letter to the Head Quarters Department of the Missouri, St. Louis Mo. December 21^st, 1863:

Special Order No 348:

Capt. Jesse M. Gilstrap of the 1^st Ark Cavalry is upon the representation of his immediate commanding officer … is ordered mustered out of the service of the United States for the following reasons

1^st Failing to make proper company returns since his appointment

2^nd Lax discipline permitting his men to be disrespectful to him

3^rd Sleeping out of his quarters without leave

4^th Uncleanliness of person to a degree totally unbecoming his position

He will receive no final payments until he has satisfied the pay department that he is not indebted to the government.

By command of Maj. Gen Schofield

P D. Green, Assistant Adjutant General

This observation of aberrant behavior and a photograph of Jesse during this time period suggest that he suffered an acute case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In March 1863, a three-page letter written by Gilstrap and addressed to Major General Rosencranz at Fayetteville argues his case. Sometimes speaking of himself in the third person, Gilstrap states that:

He is known to be one of the few here who stood firm and true to the Federal Union in 1861. Made the last public Union speech known in the state and notwithstanding the withering storm of secession constantly strove to keep up the Union sentiment in the circle of his acquaintance. Among the first victims, he with 8 others were for several weeks imprisoned in Fort Smith Ark.

Early in May 1862 he left his family home and all that was dear only the cause of our country and took with him 17 recruits to the federal army at Cassville, Mo., they being about the first from N. W. Ark. And when Col. M. LaRue Harrison obtained leave to organize an Arkansas Redgt your petitioner raised the first full company for that the 1^st Ark Redgt and he feels that no one did more than himself to fill up said Redgt. And before the Redgt was fully organized he was placed in command of a detachment 26 miles southwest of Springfield Mo. While the rebels were holding Cassville, Mo. there remained over two months until reinforced by Capt. Galiway of said Redgt when he with said reinforcement took Cassville with the loss of only one man killed and capturing over thirty rebels and driving the rest completely out of town thus gaining the first victory gained by part of the 1^st Ark Cav.

During the 19 months the undersigned remained in the army service he has with the exception of a short time been on the extreme outposts and there served with all the vidulance [vigilance] and firmness in his power and in 3 or 6 engagements with the enemy in battle he feels that his conduct was creditable among those who know the facts.

Gilstrap goes on to deny the veracity of the charges leveled against him. He claimed only two nights out of quarters, and that due to his family being in town. He struck through the following line:

…while some other officers especially Lt. Maringer who now (illegible) your petitioner in the regiment has rarely been known to sleep in his quarters.

The 4^th charge is frivolous and made only to render me contemptable at Head Quarters Not for any superior claims to ability but as and evidence of the confidence the union men of this county have in the undersigned. He was recently elected State Senator for four years by a vote nearly double that of both his competitors, one of whom was an old citizen (man years ago a rep) the other a captain now in the Federal Army serving here. He does not allude to this to boast of a triumph over those honorable gentlemen but a fact tending to show that Ark soldiers and other voters feel that he has done his duty and been true to our country…

As to permitting my men to disrespect me, there is not a man in the company that was or is disposed to treat me with disrespect.

Sixteen attesting signatures including rank and company appear below Gilstrap’s signature.

In a letter dated April 9, 1864, Gilstrap received a response to his plea. The letter briefly states the matter:

Jesse M. Gilstrap, 1^st Ark. Cavalry, is hereby so modified as to leave him honorable out of service as by resignation from the date of his dismissal.[19]

~~~

Removed from military service and perhaps somewhat recovered from the worst of his PTSD, Gilstrap was invited to run for office by the Union Republicans now in control of state government. He won the election and traveled to Little Rock for a special session of the legislature that convened in January 1864. He served as senator representing Washington County. This marked the renewal of Union allegiance for Arkansas state government.

Senate records contain 93 mentions of Gilstrap citing resolutions he put forth or acts he brought forward for a vote on issues such as authorizing collection of school and internal improvement funds, the organization of a home and court guard, and establishing payment to the keeper of the Washington County poor house. He promoted a measure to provide relief to soldiers’ families. The 1864 Journal of the Senate of Arkansas shows that Gilstrap was nominated to fill an Arkansas seat in the U. S. Senate but after multiple ballots, the position went to another man. He was also nominated for the second U. S. Senate position, again losing the federal position to another man.[20]

Gilstrap was selected to chair a select committee on the state militia, producing Senate Bills 12 and 14 which set out recommendations for the establishment of a militia. He put forth a resolution to prohibit the appearance of certain rebel leaders to the Senate chambers, lobby, or gallery. He also introduced an amendment to emphasize that nothing about the rights of freed blacks allowed for marriage between a white person and a Negro or mulatto.

That same month, February 1864, Jesse’s comrade-in-arms and neighbor Thomas Wilhite was honorably discharged from his military service. Three months later, on April 10, 1864, according to Thomas’ mother’s first-hand account, Confederate “raiders” swept onto the Wilhite farmstead at Strickler and seized Thomas and his father. The two men were shot then hung, a slightly less barbaric form of the old ‘drawn and quartered’ executions of medieval times.

Surely knowledgeable of his friend’s revenge killing, Gilstrap skipped out on senate business for the rest of that year. In late June 1864, a substitute for Gilstrap was appointed, but no reason for his absence was given. At the time the Senate reconvened on November 24, 1864, a request was made of the doorkeeper to send word to Gilstrap, among others, that his presence was required. Gilstrap failed to appear for any further meetings of that session which remained convened through the end of the year.

In April 1865, Jesse Gilstrap resumed his elected duties and, among other things, served as chair of the Senate committee charged with making suitable arrangements for the presentation of the battle flag of the First Arkansas Cavalry. Upon Governor Isaac Murphy’s reading of a proclamation honoring the event, Colonel Bishop came forward to read a patriotic letter from Col. M. LaRue Harrison who was deemed a “credit to himself and the noble regiment whose displays of valor on sundry battle-fields he beautifully portrayed.” After an eloquent address by the Hon. James Butler who received the flag for the state, three cheers were given to the old flag. The Spring 1865 session of the Arkansas legislature adjourned immediately afterwards, April 22, 1865.[21]

Less than a month later, on May 10, 1865, Jesse’s wife Mary Ann died at the age of 35. At this point, Jesse and Mary had six children ranging in age from three to seventeen years. Records designate Mary Ann’s place of death as Arkansas, but no information has been found naming the cause of death or her place of burial. Some family accounts claim she died and was buried in Missouri where the family and children relocated for safety during the war. Perhaps she died of natural causes, but partisan depredations continued to wreak havoc in the countryside.

On March 17, 1866, less than a year after the death of his wife, Jesse Gilstrap died. Family history says that he lost his life accidentally while working on a new mill. Such deaths weren’t uncommon. As noted in a 1956 article about early mills in America,

“Killed in his mill” was a frequent epitaph of two hundred years ago. The careless miller’s life was a short one, and whether he was lifted aloft and thrown from a windmill, whacked in the head by a spar or caught by his hand or clothing in the gigantic gears and ground up, his everyday work had to be as exacting and careful as that of an airplane pilot.[22]

But it’s also quite possible Jesse suffered the same vigilantism that killed his friend Thomas Wilhite. It wouldn’t have been difficult for revengeful Confederate sympathizers to sabotage Jesse’s operation or assist in an ‘accident.’ The extent of his injuries is not known. He’s buried in the Woolsey Cemetery alongside his brother Benjamin. No other Gilstrap graves have been identified at this location. Jesse’s brother Thomas and brother-in-law Reuben Burrows are buried at the National Cemetery in Fayetteville.

On July 2, 1866, the only surviving son of Isaac and Lockey Gilstrap, Wesley H. Gilstrap, was appointed administrator of Jesse’s estate with Jacob Yoes and Redding R. Putman as his securities. On November 5, 1867, an estate balance of $810.20 was confirmed, apparently the result of the sale of Jesse’s lands. No record of that sale has been found. The estate was fully settled and vacated July 11, 1873.

Throughout the Civil War years and its aftermath, tragedies decimated the greater Gilstrap family. In addition to the war-time deaths of Jesse’s brothers Thomas and Benjamin, Jesse’s brother-in-law Reuben Burrows was killed in the Battle of Prairie Grove. Of the Gilstrap sons, only Wesley, the youngest Gilstrap brother, survived.[23] Jesse’s widowed sister Nancy died in 1867 and his sister Martha, joined in marriage in 1871 to James Yoes, died in 1872 a few weeks after giving birth to a daughter, Minnie.

Jesse’s mother Lockey sided with her four sons in their allegiance to the Union and, at the start of hostilities, left her husband Isaac, a former slaveholder determined to embrace the Confederate cause. She resided briefly with her widowed daughter Nancy then with daughters-in-law and her surviving son Wesley until her death in 1873. The 1870 census finds Jesse’s father Isaac Gilstrap residing in a household headed by thirty-five year old Eliza Fellows and her four children at Vine Prairie Township, Crawford County, Arkansas. He died in 1877.

The children of Jesse and Mary Ann Gilstrap were Elizabeth Jane born 1848 in Arkansas, possibly died as a child; Martha A. born October 1850 in Missouri while Jesse was in the gold fields; Isaac 1853-1929; Elizabeth Elera (Elisa) 1855; Joshua David 1857-1897; and Thomas C. 1860, the last four born in Arkansas. With the death of both parents as well as their maternal grandparents in previous years, the children petitioned Washington County probate court for legal rights. Isaac, age eighteen, and Elizabeth age fifteen, argued as follows:

[They seek] an order of this court removing their disabilities as minors and [to] allow them to transact business in the same manner and to the same extent as if they were of full age.

The court granted their petition in the January term 1871. It is not known who provided care for the children during the five years between their father’s death in 1866 and the grant of this petition. The 1870 census finds them scattered in various households at West Fork, Elizabeth Elera age 14 with the family of Searing Stelle and Martha age 19 at the home of William Graham. It’s possible the younger children Isaac age 17, Joshua age 13, and Thomas age 10 were taken under the guardianship of Jesse’s mother Lockey, who died in 1873, or Jesse’s brother Wesley. Exactly how many children remained alive this point is debatable. The lack of any information other than a birth date for the youngest, Thomas, suggests he may have died young.

At age nineteen in 1872, Jesse’s son Isaac Gilstrap was married in Washington County to sixteen-year-old Lourinda Caghman [Caughman] by Conrad Yoes. At the time of the 1880 census, Isaac and wife and two young children resided in Mountain Township, Washington County next door to his uncle Wesley H. Gilstrap and his family, both men farming for a living. Descendants of the Gilstrap families continue to live in Washington and Crawford counties to the present day.

Jesse Gilstrap followed ancient traditions of tradesmen who practiced and advanced their craft to the betterment of their communities. He may have struggled in his military duty, but in his role as captain, he did his best to honor his responsibilities and see to the welfare of his men. Likewise in his elected office of state senator, he served the State of Arkansas by doing what he could to encourage civil government. He invested in a stronger future by starting over—again—in rebuilding his mill. The loss of his wife, brothers and parents surely caused him considerable grief, but he wasn’t a man to stop trying. His role in early Washington County history deserves recognition.

~~~

[1] “California Gold Rush Camps,” Claudine Chalmers. http://www.paulrich.net/students/readings/california_gold_rush/california_gold_11.html Accessed Feb 26, 2018

[2] “Mining El Dorado—The Greenwood Mining District,” Anthony M. Belli. County of El Dorado website. https://www.edcgov.us/landing/Living/Stories/pages/greenwood_mining_district.aspx Accessed Feb 26, 2018

[3] From “The California Gold Fields in the 1850s: Letters from Ephraim Thompson, Daviess County, Indiana.” Edited by Philip L. Cantelon. Indiana Magazine of History, Volume 65, Issue 3, pp 157-172. Online at https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/9442/12597. Accessed February 15, 2018

[4] Deed Record E-130, Washington County Archives, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

[5] Deed Record H-19

[6] Deed Record K-279, Washington County Archives

[7] Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents, Part 2. United States. Patent Office. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1858. 270

[8] Gilstrap family records. Also Historical Data Systems, comp. U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009, and National Park Service. U.S. Civil War Soldiers, 1861-1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007.

[9] Loyalty on the Frontier: Or, Sketches of Union Men of the South-west. Albert Webb Bishop. R. P. Studley and Company, printers, 1863 – Arkansas. Pages 53, 82, 93, 98, 187, 202. Available online at https://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&dq=%22loyalty+on+the+frontier%22+bishop&sig=W2VS76pLcniZwVqiwbzRWYP4Yg&ei=QOHGTLT2NcWAlAe8vrzrAQ&ct=result&pg=PA83&id=QiGnmcFdtyAC&ots=CJyTD_wk8P#v=onepage&q=gilstrap&f=false Butler served as provost marshal of Fayetteville during the war.

[10] Personal correspondence with Gilstrap descendant Jim Dye, December 30, 2017. In author’s possession. The reported speed of death after ingestion is outside the norms for poisons available at that time.

[11] “The Gilstrap Family,” Marguerite Gilstrap. Self published family record. February 1978. Washington, D.C. 21-22

[12] I Do Wish This Cruel War Was Over: First Person Accounts of Civil War Arkansas from the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, edited by Mark K. Christ and Patrick G. Williams. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2014): 57. This passage from Footnote 87.

[13] Ibid

[14] Ibid 27-28

[15] Flashback April 1953. 25

[16] “First Arkansas Union Cavalry,” Michael L. Price. Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Online at http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=1168. Accessed Dec 12, 2017

[17] “The provost marshals were the Union’s military police. They hunted and arrested deserters, spies, and civilians suspected of disloyalty; confined prisoners; maintained records of paroles and oaths of allegiance; controlled the passage of civilians in military zones and those using Government transportation; and investigated the theft of Government property.” From Tennessee Secretary of State website: http://www.tnsos.net/TSLA/provost/index.php Accessed March 5, 2018

[18] National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; Returns from U.S. Military Posts, 1800-1916; Microfilm Serial: M617; Microfilm Roll: 362

[19] Gilstrap family records

[20] Journal of the Senate of Arkansas, Sessions of 1864, 1864-65, and 1865. Price & Barton, State Printers. 1870. Multiple pages. Available online at goo.gl/FWZCD1

[21] Ibid 43

[22] “The Mills of Early America,” Eric Sloane. American Heritage, Vol. 6 Issue 6, 1955. Online at http://www.americanheritage.com/content/mills-early-america Accessed March 31, 2018.

[23] Information regarding Isaac Gilstrap and his descendants available at http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/s/c/o/F-morton-Scott-OK/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0021.html

Photographs of Gilstrap provided by Jim Dye, a Gilstrap descendant and historian

Is American Destiny Manifest?

American Progress, (1872) by John Gast, is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Columbia, a personification of the United States, is shown leading civilization westward with the American settlers. She is shown bringing light from the East into the West, stringing telegraph wire, holding a school textbook that will instill knowledge, and highlights different stages of economic activity and evolving forms of transportation. Wikipedia

Oddly enough, I had reached the same conclusion as Robert Kaplan in the process of writing my book on the West Fork valley. It was the West Fork of White River, tumbling northward along our long valley that carved the land where I live and thus the livelihoods and experiences of the people who live here. This is Kaplan’s thesis in his book, Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes American’s Role in the World.

Reading Kaplan took longer than I had expected. His prose forms dense thought clusters embroidered by quotes and references to a wide array of thinkers. But I was motivated soon after starting the book by his storyline which follows his journey from the east coast to the Pacific. And by the fact that from as far back as I can remember, I’ve loved geography.

Oh, not exactly the study of geography—although I’ve learned to appreciate that as well—but rather the experience of it. The varying shades of dirt and sand, the rise of hills and mountains, the sudden drop of arroyos and canyons carved by quick floods and persistent rivers. Rivers, desert, plains – all if it thrills me each with its own particular mood and energy. If I had been able to travel the world in my younger more flexible years, it wouldn’t have been to visit cities or museums, but rather to see the lay of the land.

But I digress. It’s not from that perspective that Kaplan examines geography’s role in the course of American history. Rather, he argues that by the unique circumstance of our nation’s particular framing by the world’s two largest oceans as well as our unique pioneer spirit, we are fated to serve as world leader. I’d have to read this book again—and his other books including The Revenge of Geography—in order to be convinced that I don’t agree with his conclusions, but as of this moment, I really don’t.

A U.S. soldier stands guard duty near a burning oil well in the Rumaila oil field, Iraq, April 2003 Wikipedia

Kaplan describes the conflict between America’s urge toward isolationism and the stake (and responsibility) we have in a global community. His narrative journey from east to west parallels (intentionally) the path of the pioneers, providing him the storyline needed to talk about how the experiences of pioneers created the unique American personality. In developing this view, Kaplan cites Bernard DeVoto and his student Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in stating that “…the geography of the American West freighted the United States with a precise and unprecedented international destiny. DeVoto saw dynamic, westering America, in Schlesinger’s words, as ‘the redeemer, spreading its free institutions to less fortunate peoples.’”[1]

…The American character of today is still to some extent a frontier character born of those solitudes [the Rockies]. Our rapacious form of capitalism, as well as the natural, unspoken national consensus to deploy the navy and air force, and sometimes even the coast guard, to the four corners of the earth, are signs of it.[2]

Kaplan’s view of the American story – and the view of many others he cites – is based on the idea of Manifest Destiny:

In the 19th century, manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. There are three basic themes to manifest destiny:

–The special virtues of the American people and their institutions

–The mission of the United States to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America

–An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty

Historian Frederick Merk says this concept was born out of “a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example … generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven.”[3]

American westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of manifest destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. Wikipedia

In this view, pioneers pushed west in order to escape the exhausted moral fiber of their European ancestors and to carve a new, more honest way of life. Pioneers faced unimaginable hardships that stiffened their spines and led to a national character found today in fighter pilots and bold inventors. Kaplan superimposes this foundation on the world of the 21^st century and questions the proper role of our nation in the global community.

He concludes that we as a nation are fated by our geography to be the leader in a “post-imperial world.” Delving into brief analyses of other regions in an attempt to understand the possibilities for U.S. interaction and intervention, Kaplan posits a leadership role of post imperialism for the U.S. but refuses to acknowledge any self-serving intention for such a role. Rather, by our unique position with oceans on both sides and the determined character of our people, we have pursued globally what needed to be done with the same vision as we pursued the western frontier.

Although the book has stimulated intense thought, I could not escape arguments that popped into my mind against his conclusions. With random brief nods to our rampant capitalism, never in these nearly two hundred pages did Kaplan talk about the role of corporations or profit seeking-entrepreneurs in motivating modern U.S. foreign policy or the pioneers. Free land, or the exploitation of virgin forests and wildlife, or the unearthing of precious minerals were what motivated the pioneers as much as seeking freedom to live outside the dictates of European kings and classism. That same motivation for wealth is what governs our foreign policy today, whether it’s the protection of corporate interests in developing nascent oil fields (Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America) or in more obscure resources like the rare earth deposits in Afghanistan. We might appease our consciences about trampling indigenous tribes to build oil pipelines by the idea we’re bringing them the wonders of modern civilization, but it remains to be seen whether modern civilization is superior to millennia-old sustainable traditions.

My limited scholarship on these topics can’t stand against the background of an author and scholar of the stature of Robert D. Kaplan. I’d have to read all seventeen books plus the works of other knowledgeable scholars to even begin to claim any authority. But I’m discouraged by his failure to discuss even for one paragraph the role of wealth-seeking so intrinsic to the American experience or the influence of corporations in our imperialism. His assertion that our worldwide deployment of warships and air power is basically a function of our benign responsibility and exceptionalism strikes me as outrageously self-serving.

Manifest destiny excused the genocide of Native Americans. Kaplan tries to sidestep that reality in quoting Wallace Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954):

What destroyed the Indian was not primarily political greed, land hunger, or military power, not the white man’s germs or the white man’s rum. What destroyed him was the manufactured products of a culture, iron and steel, guns, needles, woolen cloth, things that once possessed could not be done without.[4]

I call bullshit.

Caricature showing Uncle Sam lecturing four children labelled Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Cuba, in front of children holding books labelled with various U.S. states. A black boy is washing windows, a Native American sits separate from the class, and a Chinese boy is outside the door. The caption reads: “School Begins. Uncle Sam (to his new class in Civilization): Now, children, you’ve got to learn these lessons whether you want to or not! But just take a look at the class ahead of you, and remember that, in a little while, you will feel as glad to be here as they are!”

But Kaplan’s work also forces me to reassess what I’ve been taught throughout my lifetime about our role as a nation. I equivocate on whether to accept that our system of governance is the most enlightened in the world, but I can’t call to mind one that seems superior. I also can’t deny that we enjoy the highest standard of living and that our wealth, indisputably ill-gotten in many ways, has still been a life-saving resource to endangered, starving or sick people around the world. I can’t ignore the accomplishments of our technology in creating a global culture joined through the Internet, telephones, and television which in many ways may serve as the ultimate means of moral arbitration.

I’m bemused by Kaplan’s assertion that our national character and world role stems from our unique continental configuration in having an ocean both to our east and our west. But so does Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Canada, South Africa, Great Britain, Italy, France, India, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and more. Could it be that the wealth-building resources of these other nations had long since been exhausted either internally or by other empires before the modern age? Why doesn’t Kaplan acknowledge that the American colonists stumbled onto a continent virtually untouched by human exploitation and it is from that harvest of Nature’s bounty that our wealth was captured?

Why doesn’t he talk about what might happen when our soil, rivers, and forests are as decimated as those that used to undergird the wealth of Europe or India?

No matter my arguments at various points in his work, I’m glad I read it. I will read it again. Kaplan’s previous positions as national security chair at the U.S. Naval Academy, as a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security means I need to know more about what he knows and how he thinks if I hope to consider myself informed on our nation’s foreign policy. This no doubt has been the rationale for his many readers/reviewers including James Mattis, David Petraeus, Henry Kissinger, and many other prominent Americans not to mention review boards and other authors.

~~~

[1] Kaplan, Robert. Earning the Rockies. New York: Random House. 19

[2] 24

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

[4] Kaplan 27

West Fork Valley — New Release!

Riverside Park, West Fork. Perfect display of how the river has shaped the land, creating high bluffs and rich bottom land.

I moved into the West Fork Valley in 1973. I had no previous experience here except, as a child, one train ride from Fort Smith to Fayetteville circa 1952 and then passing back and forth from Fort Smith to Fayetteville during the 1950s in our 1949 Chevy (and later our 1954 Chevy). Driving Highway 71 in those days provoked high tension whether we had to pull over to wait out a driving rainstorm or creep along due to impenetrable fog or shudder as big trucks zoomed past.

Mount Gayler provoked an outcry from me and my younger sister—could we stop and have pie at Burns Gables? Could we ride the train? Only one time that I remember did the journey involve stopping for a train ride, a thrilling dash along the tracks circling the pond, wind in my hair, grinning as the high-pitched whistle blew. Another time we sat around a table at Burns Gables to savor a slab of delicious pecan pie.

The landscape of high mountains and sheer cliffs made its mark in my memory. For years my amateur drawings portrayed hills of the same height marching off into the distance in ever faded color. I never understood why it seemed mountains should look that way until, as an adult, I took another look at the profile of the Boston Mountains framing the West Fork valley.

Passing through West Fork on our way north marked the last hurdle before finally reaching Fayetteville, but the only thing that lodged in my memory about the place was the rock “tourist court” along the highway. Then the green-and-white rotating light flashed through the sky at the Fayetteville airport, a magical sight in fog or rain. In those days on that two-lane narrow highway, the trip took nearly three hours.

Imagine my surprise when, in middle age, I discovered that I had ancestors buried at Brentwood and Woolsey! After the Civil War, my dad’s grandfather, Charles McDonald Pitts, moved from Johnson County, Arkansas, to the Brentwood area along with his mother Elizabeth and several brothers and their families. Charles’ mother and his first wife Easter (Parker) and newborn daughter Tennessee are buried at Brentwood as well as a young niece Eliza. Two brothers and some of their children are buried at Woolsey. Charles would remarry there, a local girl named Linnie Mae Rose who became my great-grandmother. The Pitts family moved away by 1900 to take up residence in the western part of the county.

See full map at https://www.bwdh2o.org/beaver-lake/watershed-maps/

Now, after nearly fifty years of living here, I can almost claim to be an old timer. But fifty years is nothing compared to the two hundred years of family heritage a few of the valley’s residents can claim. I wanted to know who came here first, who built these towns, what it was like to carve out a living in this rugged land. So I started digging.

The West Fork Valley, my new release, is what I found, a history of the watershed of the West Fork of White River, its natural wonders, its past, its people through 1900. It’s my great pleasure to announce this book to the world!

Visit the book page on this site for more information and purchase link.

Last Minute Gift? Visit your local bookstore

Great gifts abound at your local bookstore. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, that means Nightbird Books on Dickson Street where you’ll find all my books on local history.

Check out Murder in the County: 50 True Stories of the Old West, a collection of murder stories from the 1800s here in this county.

Less expensive but just as intriguing, The Violent End of the Gilliland Boys chronicles the amazing journey of one pioneer family, also a local story.

Don’t live in Northwest Arkansas? Simple — check out all my books at Amazon.com

Best Gift Ever

All around us, every day, the people and events of the past still echo. What is better than to meet those memories and share them with your loved ones?

From 1835 to the present day, the City of Fayetteville in Washington County, Arkansas, has enjoyed a vibrant and colorful history. Its reputation as a regional center for arts, culture, and education began early in its history. Frequently named one of the nation’s Top 10 cities, Fayetteville hosts the University of Arkansas and its famous Razorback athletic teams.

In Glimpses of Fayetteville’s Past, history comes alive in stories of the town’s origins and development. The five articles contained in Glimpses of Fayetteville’s Past focus on under-reported aspects of that history. Published initially by the county’s historical society, these intensively-researched works have been revised and expanded with illustrations, photographs, and maps.

“The History of Fayette Junction and Washington County’s Timber Boom” now include not only an in-depth review of Fayetteville’s first major industry but also three appendices which examine wagon production in Fayetteville, the name and tradition of Sligo, and the Fulbright mill.

“Quicktown” delves into the story behind this quirky short-lived suburb in south Fayetteville.

“546 West Center” tracks the development of a landmark Fayetteville property from its earliest use as a site for an ice factory in the 1880s.

“The Rise and Fall of Alcohol Prohibition” documents the use, production, and regulation of alcoholic drink in Washington County from before statehood through the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, and features indictment and other crime data.

“175 Years of Groceries” follows the transition from country store to supermarkets to big box stores and includes newspaper advertisements showing price changes over those decades.

Whether a reader is interested in learning more about the history of Fayetteville or simply enjoys the peculiar details of how time changes all things, Glimpses of Fayetteville’s Past will inform and entertain.

Amazon buy link