OPINION

Contrarians across the county

Scott County, in western Arkansas adjoining Oklahoma, is a beautiful area with wild rivers, some of the higher peaks in the Ouachita Mountains, vast pine forests, and vistas overlooking the broad valleys which attracted settlers to the area.

Lately though, Scott County found itself in the news when the county quorum court declared the county a Second Amendment Sanctuary--hinting at the contrarian positions local residents have taken in the past.

Established in November 1833, Scott is one of the state's older counties. It is named for Andrew Scott, a member of the territorial Arkansas Supreme Court. Legislation provided that the residence of Walter Cauthron, near what is today Booneville in Logan County, would serve as the temporary seat of justice.

After a misstep or two in designating a county seat, in 1845 the county accepted an offer from William G. Featherston for a free 10-acre plot of land where a post office named Poteau Valley already existed.

According to Wes Goodner of Little Rock, a Scott County native and longtime student of the area's history, the new seat was named Waldron in honor of the surveyor who drew up plans for the town.

Both the county and Waldron grew steadily during the years leading up to the Civil War. One local resident wrote in an 1859 letter to a Fort Smith newspaper of the need for "more good farmers" to cultivate the "fine lands" of Scott County.

That same writer was not so sanguine about the new county seat: "Waldron, the county seat of Scott, is situated on the banks of the Poteau, 45 miles from Fort Smith on the road leading from Missouri to the south. I am sorry that I cannot say much for Waldron, for it is far behind where it ought to be, and yet it is a pleasant little village, and some very clever folks live there."

The writer had mixed emotions about those clever folks: "It contains three stores, three groceries, two hotels, a post office, one blacksmith shop, one jail, one barn [a reference to the courthouse], and about a dozen dwellings, two doctors, one lawyer, four merchants, three grocery keepers, one clerk, one sheriff, one justice of the peace, three or four gentlemen, a half-dozen pretty girls, lots of women and children, some dogs, and 17 loafers."

This unnamed writer symbolizes the division within Scott County which prevailed throughout much of the 19th century. Nowhere was this more evident than during the Civil War.

In my recent reading on Scott County, I was struck by the lukewarm support for the Confederacy.

Brian Robertson of Little Rock, a historian and archivist at the Richard C. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies at the Central Arkansas Library System, has conducted a study of the 2nd Arkansas Cavalry in which he discovered that Scott County provided one-fourth of the volunteers in that federal unit.

Robertson quoted a federal officer who commanded a unit scouting deep into the Ouachitas in late 1863: "The great majority of the inhabitants of the district ... through which I marched are soundly loyal ... Every conceivable means has been used to force these loyal men into the rebel service; they have been hung by the scores, they have been hunted down with bloodhounds ... they have been robbed of their property, chained and imprisoned, yet amidst all this persecution and suffering these people stood out, and everywhere I went through their country they greeted my column with shouts of joy."

While it might not have been a great majority, it is clear that Scott and adjoining Montgomery County were home to many Unionists.

Although no battles occurred in Scott County, federal troops from Fort Smith occupied Waldron in October 1863, staying about six months before abandoning the city. Wes Goodner has written that "excepting the homes of Union sympathizers, much of the town [of Waldron] was burned by Union troops upon departure."

The burning occurred during a period of lingering and civil disturbance following Reconstruction, known informally as the Waldron War. Over a five-year period starting in 1874, conflict involving political, personal, and Civil War-related enmity took the lives of several people, and forced the governor to send in the militia on three occasions.

Getting a handle on the Waldron War is difficult. Few records exist on the conflict, and newspaper accounts tend to be partisan if not unreliable. It is generally agreed that the troubles resulted from division within Scott County Republicans, going back to the internecine battle following the gubernatorial contest between Elisha Baxter and Joseph Brooks in 1872.

By 1876, men in both factions were being killed. In September of that year the situation deteriorated to the point that the sheriff met with the adjutant general of the Arkansas state militia, warning that "things in his county [are] in a deplorable condition."

A militia unit of 50 men was sent to Waldron in August 1876. Later the county was divided into two military districts with a company of militia stationed in each. In 1877 the governor sent two companies of state militia to the county, but peace proved temporary. In the spring of the following year a group of armed men occupied Waldron, sending the sheriff scurrying out of town.

By the beginning of 1878, seven companies of militia were keeping the peace in Scott County, with state adjutant general James M. Pomeroy lodging in the Featherston Hotel, derisively referred to by some as Pomeroy's Citadel. Violence declined gradually, although the sheriff was killed in the summer of 1879.

Waldron and Scott County were in dire straits by the time peace was restored. County government had operated from rented quarters since the courthouse was burned during the Civil War. In 1904, a new courthouse was erected. The burned-out business district was replaced with brick structures.

The coming of railroads provided a boost to the economy of Scott County, with a new town named Mansfield developing after the arrival of the Frisco Railroad in 1885. The Arkansas Western Railroad reached Waldron in 1902.

The county's huge pine forests were not systematically exploited until the Caddo River Lumber Co. established a large sawmill and company town named Forester southeast of Waldron in 1931. Thomas W. Rosborough, the hard-driven sawmill owner, spared no effort in building Forester.

The town was composed of sections with names such as Green Town and Angel Town. The 350 black residents lived in the Quarters, which had its own school, church, and recreation area; the company store, post office, and theater were open to all. The population in 1940 was 1,300.

Forester was a classic company town. The employer provided everything from modest housing to a hotel, plus schools, two churches, a theater, post office, drugstore, ballpark and stadium, and a community hall which also served as a home for the Masonic order.

Residents received free medical care from a company doctor. Unlike their neighbors for miles around, Forester residents had access to running water, and a company-owned power plant provided electricity to everyone.

Rosborough sold Forester, the largest sawmill in the state, to Dierks Lumber and Coal Co. in 1945. The town survived until timber resources grew scarce, closing in 1952.

Despite the passage of almost 70 years since Forester closed, former residents fondly recall how they grew up in an orderly and secure town, even during the Great Depression. Among those whose family left Forester was young Billy Roy Wilson, who would go on to become a prominent attorney and U.S. federal judge.

The 2010 U.S. census found 11,233 residents of Scott County, with 3,618 living in Waldron. Blythe's Scott County Museum interprets the local history.

Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.

Editorial on 03/29/2020

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