Sept. 30 is the 178th birthday of Madison County, an area known for its beautiful scenery and as the home of two prominent Arkansas governors.
Situated in the rugged Ozark Mountains, the county was slow to attract large numbers of settlers. However, American Indians left many footprints on the land. The large overhanging bluffs typical in the area provided shelter for generations of Indians. The Arkansas Archeological Survey's database includes 410 sites in Madison County, the bulk being prehistoric.
By 1827, families were settling along the numerous streams and rivers that provided some good bottomland for farming. Among the early arrivals was a party from Madison County, Ala. They chose to name the new county after their old home, and also chose to name the new county seat after Huntsville, Ala.
Madison County had about 2,500 residents in 1836 when the county was created from portions of Carroll, Newton, and Washington Counties. Huntsville has always served as county seat, an unusual situation in Arkansas history.
The Civil War was devastating to Madison County and much of northwest Arkansas, not so much from the regular military forces as from the myriad of guerrilla bands as well as simple brigands and outlaws. County residents were split by The War, with residents fighting in both the Confederate and Union armies.
While no major battles were fought in Madison County, a tragic event occurred in January 1863 when nine men were executed by Union forces in what has become known as the Huntsville massacre. The commander of the Union forces, Lieutenant Colonel Elias Briggs Baldwin of the 8th Missouri Cavalry, was later tried for murdering prisoners of war, but he was freed due to a lack of witnesses.
The Civil War also provided the backdrop for the selection of the first of two governors from Madison County. Isaac Murphy was an educator and periodically an elected county official. He found a place in Arkansas history during the secession convention of 1861 when he was the only delegate to vote against joining the Confederacy. He had to flee the state when local Confederates threatened him, and was forced to leave his family behind.
Murphy became governor in 1864 by authority of a new constitution drafted after Union forces captured Little Rock in September 1863. He was able to accomplish little, given the fact that most of the state was not under firm control of Union forces. I have always thought highly of Gov. Murphy, who, as a young state legislator in the 1840s had unsuccessfully introduced legislation to create a public school system for Arkansas. Years later, when giving his inaugural speech as governor, Murphy devoted one-third of his remarks to the importance of education.
The second governor to hail from Madison County was Orval Eugene Faubus, a very different man from Isaac Murphy. While Murphy grew up in a prosperous Pennsylvania family and was well educated, Orval Faubus was born into a poor family of hard-working dirt farmers and laborers who could not afford to educate their bright son. Faubus' father, Sam, named his son for Eugene Debs, the great socialist leader.
Faubus, who was elected governor in 1954 and served a record six two-year terms, was one of those gifted young men who offered so much potential. And, indeed, he would possibly be judged our best governor of all time had it not been for the debacle known as the Central High School integration crisis of 1957.
Although Madison County would remain an area of small farms, the arrival of a railroad in the late 1880s opened up the area's vast hardwood forests to exploitation. The sawmill town of Pettigrew sprang up on the railroad on the southern edge of Madison County. By 1919, Pettigrew was home to more than a dozen stave mills and sawmills, causing it to be known as the "Hardwood Capital of the World." Also brought to life by the railroad, the town of St. Paul prospered and briefly grew to over 1,000 people, making it larger than the county seat in 1900.
The good economic times passed with the cutting of the forests, and Madison County suffered through years of hard times. Many families moved westward, with the population dropping from an all-time high of 19,864 in 1900 to 9,068 in 1960. Today, the population has recovered to almost 16,000, a large percentage of whom commute to jobs in neighboring Washington County.
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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 on 09/28/2014