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A place to remember, preserve & share information about our ancestors. |
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H. W. RogersH. W. Rogers, ex-sheriff, and one of the county's most prominent men, was born in Madison County, Tenn., a son of John Ropers, who was born in Middle Tennessee, his parents having removed there from North Carolina at a very early day. They were tillers of the soil, and always had the reputation of being honorable, upright people. The grandmother live to be very old, over one hundred, and it is said by some that she lived to be one hundred and fourteen years of age. Her death occurred in Dallas County, Ark., she having come to this State in 1849 or 1850 to live with her children. John Ropers attained his majority in Tennessee, and after attaining his majority he was married there to bliss Mary Ann Brown, a native of North Carolina, who had been a resident of Tennessee from the time she was ten years of age. Her death occurred in 1846, at the age of fifty years, she having become the mother of one child, the subject of this sketch. Soon after her death H. V. Ropers started out in life for himself, and after following the plow in Tennessee for one year he removed to Arkansas in 1848, and in the spring of 1849 he went to Hot Springs for his health, after a short stay removing from there to Bradley County in 1850 where ho opened up a small farm in what is now this county, on the west side of Saline River. In the fall of 1850 he moved to Pine Bluff, and engaged in the manufacture of brick, continuing in the brick business until the opening of the war in 1861. In the spring of that year he opened a mercantile establishment, but discontinued it in April to join the Confederate army, becoming a member of Company A, Capt. Cameron's Company of Infantry, and was in the battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded. Not being able to travel he joined a cavalry company, and thus served until the close of the war, proving himself to be a brave and trusty soldier, and of great assistance to the cause he espoused. He also took part in the engagements at Chickamauga; Thompson's Station, being first under Forrest, and at the time of the surrender under Wheeler. After his surrender in North Carolina he returned to his old home, and in this county has since resided, his home since 1876 being in Toledo, at which time he was appointed deputy sheriff for two years. At the end of this time he sold goods at Toledo, Ark., for W. L. Connor, and was also commissioned postmaster at Toledo for two years, after which he was elected sheriff of Dorsey (now Cleveland) County, filling the same with success for three terms in succession. In 1886 Mr. Ropers began making a set of abstract books of Cleveland County, which he has since completed. Work is in progress on the abstracts of Dallas County, and it is contemplated to make abstracts of Calhoun County, and establish an office at some point on the railroad convenient to the three counties, with branch offices at the several county seats, for the transaction of a general abstract and real estate business. He is a member of the A. F. & A. M., Culpepper Lodge No. 186, of Cleveland County, and has been a member of the same for many years. He is a Democrat through and through, and is one of the representative citizens of this section of the country. His maternal grandfather served in the Revolutionary War.
Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas |
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