I'm riding with Jeff Hankins of the Arkansas State University System staff, and we're headed to our parking spot in advance of an ASU football game on the Jonesboro campus. Hankins parks in front of the Judd Hill Center, a monument to the foresight of Esther Hill Chapin.
In 2005, the Judd Hill Foundation gave $1 million to the ASU Foundation to build the 6,300-square-foot facility that houses the foundation's offices. It wasn't the first gift of that size from the foundation.
In 1994, a $1 million gift resulted in the establishment of the Judd Hill Chair in Environmental Biology. In 2004, a $1 million gift led to the creation of the Judd Hill Chair in Agricultural Biotechnology.
Earlier this year, Osceola lawyer Mike Gibson, the foundation's trustee, announced completion of a $1 million gift for the Judd Hill Faculty Excellence Fund and committed another $1 million for the Judd Hill Student Research and Innovation Endowment.
Chapin, who died in 1991 at age 91, owned the Judd Hill Plantation in Poinsett County. It was named for her father, Orange Judd Hill. His story was that of other large planters of that era in the Arkansas Delta--buy timberland, clear it, drain it and establish row-crop operations.
Hill was a wealthy banker and businessman from Kansas City. He bought a 5,800-acre tract south of Trumann in 1925 as a source of wood for a barrel factory he owned in Springfield, Mo. Esther, his adopted daughter, left her home in Illinois in 1930 along with her husband Sam Chapin to move to Trumann.
"Sam Chapin, a civil engineer, soon put his professional expertise to use in clearing and draining the land and putting it under cultivation," Sam Morgan writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "In doing so, Hill and the Chapins joined thousands of other landowners during the early decades of the 20th century in transforming wetland forest to cropland in order to exploit the rich soil of the Arkansas Delta.
"In June 1933, Hill transferred title to the property to Esther and Sam Chapin jointly, apparently as a belated wedding gift. When the Chapins first took ownership of Judd Hill Plantation, as it would continue to be known, the tax debts were enormous. By 1940, though, the Chapins had succeeded in making the farm profitable thanks to New Deal crop-reduction payments and hands-on management. Profits mounted in the thriving economy of World War II and the postwar era."
Part of the land was sold in 1950, but the plantation still consisted of 4,700 acres. Until his death in 1946 at Trumann, Orange Judd Hill split his time between Arkansas, Missouri and a summer house in Michigan.
In a short history of the plantation, Morgan writes: "The South had long been the domain of King Cotton, but the goal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Agriculture Department was to end the chronic overproduction of the fiber, which had driven the price as low as 4 cents per pound in certain areas of Arkansas and 5 cents nationwide. No doubt this was why a document from the Hill papers ... listed 1,605 acres of corn and only 1,296 of cotton. Small plots of oats and other grains, as well as tenants' gardens, comprised the remainder of the 3,200 cultivated acres. According to this document, the work force on Judd Hill land consisted of three groups--sharecroppers, renters and day laborers. As in other parts of the Arkansas Delta, sharecroppers grew most of the cotton in exchange for a house and a share of the proceeds from their crop."
Unlike sharecroppers, renters provided their equipment and supplies. They usually received a house and three-fourths of the crop's proceeds. Day laborers were paid a wage.
"The early 1930s were difficult times for the Chapins," Morgan writes. "They frequently relied on loans from Esther's father to cover farm expenses. Even so, it was difficult to accumulate enough money to satisfy all their creditors. For example, a 1936 letter from the St. Francis Levee District noted that a check for delinquent taxes had been returned due to insufficient funds. By the decade's end, however, the plantation was making a profit, enabling its owners to pay off the $96,000 mortgage within three years. ... The key to this turnaround was the penchant of both partners for hard work."
The plantation had a store, a cotton gin, a sawmill, a shingle mill, an animal feed business, a blacksmith shop and even a thriving cattle herd.
"The Chapins occasionally entertained at the large home they built at Judd Hill during the early 1930s, where their visitors included Sen. J. William Fulbright and other prominent politicians as well as the business and agricultural elite of Memphis and east Arkansas," Morgan writes. "Civic affairs also occupied part of the couple's time."
The last sharecroppers on the plantation had retired by the early 1970s. Cotton remained the primary crop.
Sam Chapin died from heart disease at age 74 in 1976. The couple's only child, son Judd, had died three years earlier. Esther operated the plantation with a grandson until management disputes led him to move to Florida in 1983.
After Esther's death, Judd Hill became a nonprofit foundation with Gibson as the trustee. The land is now leased to several farmers, and cotton remains the main crop. The cotton gin still stands and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. ASU uses part of the plantation as a research farm and sponsors an annual Judd Hill Field Day during which new techniques and crop varieties are demonstrated.
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 10/30/2019