At last our new home is finished and we are moved in. My wife and I are exhausted from the demands of packing and unpacking hundreds of boxes, but we are glad to have the worst of the ordeal past us. Unpacking and shelving my library, which fills more than 100 boxes, is taking far more time than I projected-in part because I come across books that need an immediate thumbing-through. The best example is a 1991 volume compiled and lightly edited by James J. Johnston of Fayetteville. How can one resist dipping into a book titled Shootin’s, Obituaries, Politics; Emigratin’, Socializin’, Commercializin’, and the Press: News Items from and about Searcy County, Arkansas, 1866-1901.
Searcy County, which was created in 1838, has always fascinated me. Located deep withinthe Ozarks, the county is full of beautiful mountain scenery-and the area is home to America’s first national river, the Buffalo. Nevertheless, the county has a poverty rate of more than 25 percent. In politics, Searcy County is solidly Republican, although a feisty opposition ensured that politics was played in a rough and tumble fashion-including the occasional shooting.
Throughout much of its history, Searcy County has been home to two newspapers-one Republican and one Democratic. James J. Johnston located many surviving copies of the Democratic Mountain Wave and the Marshall Republican, allowing him a vast reservoir from which to document Searcy County politically, economically and socially.
As historian Michael B. Dougan has noted, local newspapers are “community diaries.” In Johnston’s compilation one can read, for example, about decoration day at Witt Springs, where the organizers (Union army veterans) cautioned: “All persons who come are expected to leave their prejudices and dogs at home and all young men are expected to leave their bottles and pistols at home.”
Some newspaper accounts tell of the economic activity of the area. One 1899 advertisement for Aday & Son store offered to buy “your eggs, ginseng and golden seal. We pay the highest market price and sell you goods as cheap as can be bought in Marshall.”
Given my interest in travel history, I especially enjoyed the stories documenting the difficulty of travel in Searcy County. One account, published in July 1886, was headlined “To ‘Tight Wad’ and Back,” the story of a trip across several northern counties, concluding in Searcy County. “To anyone who has never been in these counties, and owing to their inaccessibility very few citizens of the state have traveled in them, the trip is a revelation” wrote one of the party. Tight Wad, by the way, was the informal name for the village of Western Grove.
Another travel account was published in July 1898, the story of a group of educators and pupils traveling from Harrison to Batesville and Newark via Marshall and Mountain View: “One hundred and forty miles by wagon over the mountainous section of northern Arkansas, with ladies and trunks and band boxes and feed and [a] camping outfit. . . .” Slowed by rains, rough roads, and a balky team of horses, the travelers eventually ran out of food: “. . . delay and exhaustion of commissary had necessitated [a] reduction of our camp fare to corn meal mush, ham and gravy with black coffee; this was supper and breakfast diet.”
W.L. Downing, the teacher and writer of the account, was impressed with the school houses that were being built across the Ozarks. He was far less happy with the religious influence in the area: “We did not see any church buildings . . . at Western Grove, Marshall, Timbo or Mountain View. These places are certainly not so much alive to their religious as to their educational needs.”
Downing was also appalled by the roads he traveled: “Our roads especially in the mountain section, are without question the greatest obstacle to development we have to contend with,” Downing grumbled. “Mr. Editor,” he wrote, “I have traveled over forty-three of the seventy-five counties in Arkansas by every means of conveyance in use except balloon and submarine, and our bad roads are a most painful affliction to ourselves and a disgust to strangers.” He concluded, “Thus in many respects we are primitives in surroundings and consequently in thought and in life.” -
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial, Pages 80 on 04/20/2014