Collectible nonfiction

Lately I have been going through my large collection of books about Arkansas--trying to decide which volumes I can live without. The Friends of the Library in Malvern, of which I am president, are having a book sale and silent auction, and I am donating some of my rare items for the silent auction. The process has been fun but challenging--and time consuming.

My book collecting started in 1969 while I was a college senior. It began innocently enough when I stopped at an estate sale near my home in Little Rock. I recall the autumn air being refreshingly cool, and the trees radiant in their bright reds and oranges. Arrayed before me were long tables laden with kitchenware, tools, clothing, and a large box of books.

Like most books found at estate sales, many of the volumes were old and ragged--several titles by Pearl Buck, a collection of homilies by popular television priest Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and a thin paperback booklet with a picture of a battleship on the front. For a mere 10 cents, I walked away with that booklet. It was published in 1911 to commemorate the launching of the USS Arkansas battleship.

Since that fateful estate sale visit in 1969, I have assiduously collected books and other publications which document the state of Arkansas. While it has been years since I counted the books in my Arkansas library, I estimate the total at about 1,500 volumes. And, while I have collected a few novels and books of poetry by Arkansas writers, the vast bulk of the collection is nonfiction.

Having recently built a new home with a spacious office and library, I am finally able to shelve my collection for easy access. I put that to good use recently by selecting several prized volumes to donate to the library fundraiser.

One book is The Old Town Speaks by Charlean Moss Williams. Published in 1951, this book is a kind of miscellany about the small Hempstead County historic town of Washington, Ark. This village astraddle the Southwest Trail to Texas was never large, though thousands of Confederate soldiers camped about the town during the Civil War. Practically the entire central core of the town is now preserved as Historic Washington State Park.

The author of The Old Town Speaks was a descendent of James and Sarah Virginia Moss, true pioneers who settled along the Southwest Trail in 1818 while Arkansas was still part of Missouri. Like other early Arkansas pioneers, the extended Moss family first settled on old Indian mounds, a good choice in flood-prone southwest Arkansas, but detrimental to these prehistoric sites.

Much of Old Town consists of interesting articles from the historic Washington Telegraph newspaper, probably the second-most historically significant newspaper in Arkansas history next to the Arkansas Gazette. Established in 1844 as a stoutly Whig journal, the Telegraph was the only Arkansas newspaper published continually during the Civil War.

Among the biographies I am contributing to the fundraiser is the story of Harvey Couch, the founder of Arkansas Power & Light Co., the predecessor to the modern Entergy Corp. Titled Harvey Couch, the Master Builder, this relatively rare volume from 1947 was written by Winston P. Wilson, a prominent businessman and Baptist lay leader.

This book ought to be popular with an audience of Malvern readers since Harvey Couch's first power plant was located in that Hot Spring County city. It ought to appeal to residents of Garland County too, since Couch profoundly changed that area by building Remmel and Carpenter dams and thereby creating lakes Catherine and Hamilton.

The rarest title I am donating is Dallas T. Herndon's massive three-volume survey of state history titled Centennial History of Arkansas. It was published in 1922, a belated contribution to the celebration of the centennial of Arkansas becoming a territory in 1819.

Herndon was the first director of the Arkansas History Commission and state historian. Working for years with a budget smaller than that of the state barbers' examining board, Herndon managed to do "salvage history"--meaning he pulled together a state archives, assisted other researchers, and he wrote.

While Herndon could be reactionary in his historical interpretations, and more than a few errors crept into the book, Centennial History of Arkansas must be applauded for its scope and richness of detail, including some surprising minutia. For example, on page 502 of Volume One, the reader learns that in 1894 Arkansas owed the federal government $3,000 for bonds sold to the Chickasaw Indian orphan fund, as well as unpaid interest of $5,700.

The Friends of the Library in Malvern and Hot Spring County lost almost $30,000 when the General Assembly recently slashed the state appropriation for libraries. This fundraiser cannot replace that amount of money, but it can cushion the impact--and folks can buy some interesting and rare publications on our state. Email me for details on the benefit at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.

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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County.

Editorial on 08/09/2015

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