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Days of Town Crier,
Town Lot Sale Days
Episode in Pageant
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The establishment of the county seat from the town crier to the sale of
lots will be depicted in the sec-ond episode of the
historical page-ant of Fayetteville, according to a
sketch and cast of characters for the episode announced
by E. M. Ratliff, who is chairman for the episode.
The episode brings in the town
crier, whose part will be taken by
George Barnes; the auctioneer,
H. L. Pearson; four commissioners,
Dr. B. F. McAllister, G. C. Hurst,
W. F Dunn and J. D. Eagle, and
two surveyors, W. C. Smith and
E. M. Ratliff.
The drama will follow as closely as possible the actual events depic-ted,
which covered a period of years and were on a larger
scale than is possible in the area of the stage.
Although records seem somewhat
contradictory as to the events in
question, it seems certain that the
work was done by four com-missioners to establish the
county seat. These were Lewis Evans, Larkin Newton,
Samuel Vaughn and John Woody.
"The survey was made," says the
History of Northwest Arkansas, "by Charles McClelland,
then deputy county surveyor, who was assisted by John
Smallman, James Parr, William McGarrah and A. Mankins,
as chain bearers. Lots were sold chiefly by public
auction, A Whinnery being the auctioneer. Up to 1837
sale of lots totalled $6,339.
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"Abe" Lincoln Letter
Asking Postmastership
With
Arkansan, Shown
A letter written by Abraham Lin-
coln to former Governor Meade Fishback asking him to
form a law partnership with him is on display at
the Fayetteville Centennial Museum.
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Mark Bean had over lands. During
the conflict of Osage and Cherokee
grants of lands over the extent of
the Lovely Purchase from the Osage, it was found that Bean, with
other settlers (John Alexander, a man named Shannon, George and
William McGarrah and two Simp-sons), were living on lands within the
Lovely Purchase. So by order of the government at Washington, the
"squatters" were evicted; and evicted they were by men from the
command of Zachery Taylor at Fort Gibson, near what is now Muskogee,
Oklahoma.
Most of the seven "squatters" re-
turned to their homes and their
ruined crops after the evicting party
had gone back to Fort Gibson, but
Mark Bean and his family went in-
to what is now Franklin county, near Ozark, buying land on the
Arkansas.
This was the plantation where he
grew cotton that later went into his
mill. He was sent to the legislature
first from his new home.
But after "Lovely" county was
discovered to be mostly in Okla- homa, and the present boundary of
Arkansas was fixed and Washington county created (and probably Mark
Bean had no small part in these "findings,) the pioneer came back to
the place he still considered his home.
Set apart as a leader, Bean, even
if he had wanted to do so, was not
permitted to drop back into a life
lived just for himself, but was stam-ped as the person to look after
the needs of this part of the country
in the new, stiff, governmental ma-
chine. He had made tracks where
others could follow; and when the
followers came within sight of him,
they gestured to him to keep on
leading.
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Her Family Represents
100 Yrs. Local History
Mrs. Bettie McGarrah Reed of El-
kins, who claims John Bunyan as an
ancestor, is daughter of Fayette-
ville's first resident, William Mc-Garrah. Her family
and its various
branches running into five genera-
tions is the only one yet recorded
with the Centennial writers that rep-
resents 100 years and over of county history.
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March
the 27, 1871
Outstanding
Date In
University History
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The most important event in the edu-
cational history of Arkansas, of
Washington county, and of Fayette-
ville, was an act of the Legislature
approved March 27, 1871, entitled
"An act for the location, organization and maintainence
of the Arkansas Industrial University (later the
Uni-versity of Arkansas) with a Normal Department
therein."
Bidders for the location included:
Fayetteville and Washington County,
$130,000 (plus interest for 30 years,
making total of nearly half million);
Batesville, $50,000; A. P. Robinson of Conway who
offered a quarter section of land, and Hon. Liberty
Bartlett who offered 92 acres of Pulaski county land but
whose sec-tion did not raise the necessary cash.
In 1872 the board, consisting of
Hon. Thomas Smith and Trustees
Bennet, Cohn, Prather, Botefuhr,
Bishop, Searle, Young, Clayton, Sarber and Millen, sent
a committee to visit the universities of Illinois and
Michigan.
Washing county's offer was acc-epted, a Mr. Van Odell of Chicago,
who had erected the Illinois institut- tion, was
architect chosen, and work
was begun on a 160 acre site dona- ted by the county and
purchased from William McIlroy for $12,000 of which
$1,000 was raised by citi- zens of Fayetteville, largest
sub-scribers being Lafayette Gregg and David Walker.
Contract was let to Meyers and Oliver for $130,000. Work
was begun in September 1873.
The period of 1861-67 is re-corded in history as "practically a
blank, educationally, in Washington county" because of
the Civil War which had made of the section one of
broken homes, harassed mothers left alone to care for
their families of little children, devastated fields,
burned homes,schools and churches, villages and towns.
Ruins were everywhere, where once had been fruits of
years of labor, love and care.
The people, with their wealth con-
fiscated, their homes destroyed, their
fields uncared for, found themselves
in almost worst plight than penniless
pioneers in a new country, and time
was needed for them to recuperate
their exhausted energies andfinances.
Once wealthy families turned to lab-
or of any kind, their wealth being all
swept away. Slaves were free and
negroes had to be considered a
part of the population to be housed
and fed.
While public schools were agitated,
the state was impoverished by the war and the black days
of the Re-
construction period when so many
indignities were heaped upon the
South. There was a tendency among
the aristocracy to cling to private
schools. But finally, on June 23, 1863, there was
approved an act of
the State Legislature entitled "An Act to establish and
maintain a sys-
tem of free common schools for the
State of Arkansas.
========================First Four Women Graduates
To Receive Degrees in City;
One, First Teacher's Daughter
Annette Arrington Allen, Clementine
Watson Boles, Rebecca Stirman
Davidson and Salina Marshall Martin
(Class of 1860)
Sarah Conner (Arrington), daughter
of John Conner and late wife of Judge Alfred W.
Arrington of a varied fame, was so far as is know, the
first school teacher in Fayetteville, having taught,
records show, in 1833.
Her daughter, Annette Arrington
Allen, was one of the four first women college graduates
of Arkansas
the three other young ladies being:
Clementine Watson (Boles), Rebecca Stirman (Davidson)
and Salina Marshall (Martin), all daughters of pioneer
families.
Degrees were given by the Fay-
etteville Female Institute, one of the
nine colleges granted charters by the
state of Arkansas before the Civil
War and itself chartered December,
1858.
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Story
of Sequoyah
Inventor of Alphabet,
Dates Back to 1815
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The story of how Mount Sequoyah, seat of the Southern
Methodist encampment on the eastern edge of
Fayetteville, gain-ed its name forms one of the most
inter-esting bits of early legendry abounding in
Washington county and Northwest Ark-ansas.
History records the fact that some time between 1815 and 1822,
Sequoyah, originator of the Indian alphabet and chief of
the Cherokees, crossed the Mississippi with his tribe
and migrated to Indian territory, now part of Oklahoma,
stopping for about two years in Arkan- sas, then a
territory. Old-timers and local historians stoutly
affirm that a greater part of these two years was spent
on the mountain now known by the name of the chief. If
this is true, and there are a num-ber of proofs to bear
it out, it was on the Washington county mountain that
Sequo-yah formulated the Cherokee written alphabet, the
only one ever written by an American, for it was in 1821
that the alphabet was completed. Containing 86
characters, it was said to be so simple that even the
most illiterate person had no difficulty in learning to
read and write in a short time. Letters of the Roman
alphabet were used, although Sequoyah himself could
neither read nor write English.
Born of a Cherokee squaw and a
German trader, his English name was George Guess,
Sequoyah meaning in the language of the Cherokees
"Guessed It." After entering Oklahoma with his people,
he became one of the leaders in building up friendship
between the red and white races, and so great was his
service that when Oklahoma was called upon in 1917 to
place in Statuary Hall in the capitol at Washington a
statue of her most prominent pioneer, Sequoyah, chief of
the Cherokees, was the man selected without a dissenting
murmer. So sturdy and upright was his character
said to be that the giant redwoods of California were
named "Sequoias" in his honor.
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Revolutionary Grave
of '29 Resident Marked;
Mountain Inn Hut Site
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Marking the grave of James Leeper, Revolutionary soldier and one of
Fay-etteville's early settlers, will be an impres- sive
ceremony witnessed July Fourth by the public during the
Centennial.
Mr. Leeper came to Fayetteville from Tennessee in 1829 and built a
small log farm house which is known as the old Leeper
place, now owned by Ellis Dun-can. It is on this land
that the family cemetery stands which contains the
soldiers grave where the tablet is to be placed.
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Longest-Lived
Citizen
Hale and Hearty at 111
Comes to See First Train
"Uncle Peter" Mankins was a pioneer of Washington county and one of
the longest lived of the section's citizens. Exact date
of his death is not known but he was photographed on
June 8, 1881, at the age of 111 years. On July 4, 1881,
he came to town to see the first train that ever entered
Fayetteville. The photograph was lent from the
collection of
Hugh Reagan.
.===========================
While to this institution goes the honor of having
conferred first degrees upon young women, to Arkansas
College, also a Fayetteville institution, goes the honor
of having conferred the very first degrees awarded to
any college in the state. Site of this college will be
marked with suitable ceremony July 5 as a part of
Fayetteville Centennial proceedings.
First Degrees
in State Presented
July 4, 1854
First graduating class numbered
seven, all young men, as follows:
John M. Pettigrew, William M. Cravens, Elias R. DuVal,
Robert B. Rutherford, Mark Evans, Arkansas Wilson and
John Wilson. Their diplomas, prized now as the first
ever presented to any one in Arkansas, were conferred
July 4, 1854.
Mrs. Arrington, mother of one of
the first four girl graduates, was a brilliant woman of
literary attainments.
Annette inherited considerable genius both from her father and her
mother. Her father, a resident of Fayetteville and a
Methodist minister here in 1833--4, was admitted to the
bar, "his speeches combining chaste and elaborate
rhetoric with a just and fascinating logic, or when
he chose to deal in phillipic, turning on his adversary
a cataract of fire," according to Hallum's history.
A friend of Albert Pike, Sargeant
Prestiss, Chester Ashley and JohnTaylor, as a writer of
fancy sketches of trials of these celebrities he won a
national fame. He was a Whig elector in 1844, a circuit
judge in Texas, and later a lawyer in Chicago he was claimed by a member
of the supreme bench.
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