OPINION

Meeting of historically inclined minds

By the time you read this column I will have returned from Fort Smith, where the 77th annual conference of the Arkansas Historical Association was held during the last few days. The conference is set in a different Arkansas city each year; the border city of Fort Smith was chosen as it is commemorating its bicentennial in 2018.

I have been excited about this conference since seeing the advance program, which is always filled with a wide variety of programs presented by historians ranging from high school students to seasoned academic researchers, and this year is no exception.

The theme for the conference was Frontiers and Borders, appropriate for a meeting in Fort Smith but sufficiently broad to allow for subjects such as bureaucratic red tape in Judge Isaac Parker's court, Osage Indian landowners at Bella Vista Resort, and quack medicine in Arkansas.

Many of the speakers at this year's conference are veterans of Arkansas history research, writing, and teaching. For example, Thomas DeBlack, professor of history at Arkansas Tech University and author of a standard history of the Civil War in Arkansas, is speaking on "Cadron: the border that might have been the center."

Cadron no longer exists, but the settlement seemed to have real potential when it was platted in 1818 by early settler and trader John McElmurry. Located on the north bank of the Arkansas River at the mouth of Cadron Creek, the town was a serious contender for territorial capital when Arkansas Post became unsuitable. Hamlets as diverse as Tulip in Dallas County and Norristown in Pope County have claimed to miss becoming the capital by a single vote. Actually, only Cadron and Little Rock were considered by the Territorial Legislature, and the vote was six to three in favor of Little Rock.

Cadron did serve briefly as the first county seat of Pulaski County, and monies were appropriated to build a county courthouse there, but Little Rock became both territorial capital and county seat by March 1822.

Another well-known historian who presented at the conference is Brooks Blevins, professor of history at Missouri State University. Blevins, who is incredibly productive, has just completed work on the first volume in a planned three-part history of the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks. His topic in Fort Smith was "Mason, Monks, and Mayhem: Reconstruction in North Central Arkansas."

Two other well-known scholars of Arkansas history speaking in Fort Smith were Randy Finley of Georgia State University and Richard Buckelew of Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. Finley is the author of From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom (UA Press, 1996), a history of the Freedmen's Bureau in Arkansas.

Finley's presentation in Fort Smith focused on "Rhetoric and the Irrational: The Little River County Race War of 1899." Buckelew's talk is about a rarely studied topic, "Black Lynch Mobs: An Expression of Black Agency in Jim Crow."

Fort Smith and nearby Van Buren were featured in the program on several occasions. Among the tours was a visit to the restored historic Drennen-Scott House, built in 1838 atop a bluff in Van Buren overlooking the Arkansas River. John Drennen, one of the founders of Van Buren, was a prominent Whig political leader, a businessman, Indian agent, and planter.

Ethel Simpson, an authority on Arkansas literature, spoke on Thyra Samter Winslow, a Fort Smith native who published more than 200 stories between 1915-1955 in American popular magazines.

Arkansas State University historian Cherisse Jones-Branch presented on Mame Stewart Josenberger, a remarkable black Fort Smith businesswoman and leader whose life almost spanned a century from 1868 to 1964.

One of the conference highlights was a three-hour genealogy workshop presented by Angela Walton-Raji on getting started in family history, followed by a more detailed look at genealogical research in the Fort Smith area, including American Indian sources. It was gratifying to see historians and genealogists working together rather than carefully keeping to their own spheres as in the not too distant past.

Another unexpected presence on the program was a talk by Theo Witsell of the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, who spoke on Fort Smith as a center for early botanical exploration.

Fort Smith has been known for a century for its furniture manufacturers, a subject that Hattie Felton and Victoria Garrett of the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock explored in their paper titled "Grand Rapids of the West: Fort Smith's History of Furniture Making."

Those of us who do not relish dealing with bureaucracy and red tape will squirm through a talk by Robert Cowles, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Jonesboro, titled "Frontier Justice Meets Its Nemesis--Paperwork: The Trials and Tribulations of District Court Clerks Appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, 1874-1904." Whew!

Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.

Editorial on 04/22/2018

Upcoming Events