Canterbury Museum Christchurch: 31 Oct. 2009
The Old Norman Hotel
Montgomery County Heritage page 2 Story of Benjamin R. Atchley
”My father bought a hotel in Womble in 1921, removed the second floor, and made a café – The Big 4 – on one side and built living quarters for the family on the other side of the first floor. In the Big 4 Café homemade chili, hamburgers, homemade pies, cakes, candy and baking were served. Minnie did all of her baking at the farm and Bob prepared the rest of the food until the family moved to Womble in 1922. Each day Minnie baked bread for Womble. This continued until Colonial Bakery in Little Rock began shipping baked goods in to the Big 4 Store by train. That was a happy day for Minnie.”Norman had five hotels at one time, three were actually hotels and the other two were rooming houses. The Old Norman Hotel was constructed out of rough cut lumber, from one of the early sawmills. Apparently the building was used for several businesses over her eighty years.
The hotel Benjamin R. Atchley "Bunny" bought was the one that was the Big 4, but it was not in the same location as the hotel the Caddo Hotel. The Reece and Parson's new store (or old store) was The Caddo Hotel. The building was never used as a post office or Masonic Lodge. The old post office still stands, and the top floor has been removed, and the front has been bricked and the Masonic Lodge still meets there in the basement.
Contributed by
Sharon E. Yaple, July 2007
As a child I was told that my paternal grandfather died in 1914 when my father
was three years old. No other facts were offered and I never thought to ask
until it was too late and all of my older relatives were gone. When I became
interested in researching my family history I found a terrific story.
Edward “Eddie” Millard Beard was born December 2, 1879 in Lincoln County, Arkansas. His wife Sarah Caroline “Cary” Billingsley was born October 1, 1885 in Ashley County, Arkansas and they married December 30, 1900 in Bradley County, Arkansas. The last of their five children was born and died in 1914 in Womble (now Norman), in Montgomery County, AR. When I received a copy of Eddie’s death certificate from Montgomery County, AR the cause of death stated, “Shot with a pistol in hands of Mary Billingsly.” Now, I knew that my grandmother was a Billingsley and had a sister named Mary Jane. Hmmmmm…….. I sent for a copy of the newspaper article about the shooting which appeared in the Monday, November 9, 1914 issue of The Arkansas Gazette. It reads as follows with no spelling corrections:
PREACHER KILLED BY SISTER-IN-LAW
Miss Mary Billingsly Shoots Rev. Mr. Beard at Womble
--------Is Exonerated
________________
Special to the Gazette.
Womble, Nov. 8---The Rev. E. M. Beard, 40 years old, was shot and instantly killed by his sister-in-law, Miss Mary Billingsley, at 11 o’clock this morning. A coroner’s jury, empanneled by Justice of the Peace Van Dyke, this afternoon exonerated Miss Billingsley of any blame for killing the minister. Miss Billingsley is 23 years old.
Four shots were fired at the Rev. Mr. Beard, three of them taking effect, one in the head, another piercing his heart and the third striking the fourth finger of his right hand. An unopened pocket knife was found in his left hand.
The shooting, which took place in the Big Four restaurant, where the Rev. Mr. Beard, his wife and three children and his sister-in-law resided, followed, the coroner’s jury was told this afternoon, threats made by the preacher against Miss Billingsly’s life. There was but a single eyewitness, a Mr. Ford.
According to the story told the jury this afternoon, the Rev. Mr. Beard whipped Miss Billingsly a week ago. Again on Tuesday he attempted to beat her. This morning, it is said, he told his wife he intended to kill the girl and then kill himself.
Starting upstairs to a room occupied by Miss Billingsly, he is said to have demanded that he be allowed to enter her room.
Killed as He Ascended Steps.
“Eddie, don’t come up here,” Miss Billingsly cried when he started up the steps.
He continued to climb, however, and Miss Billingsly fired a revolver she was carrying. The first shot pierced his heart, and a second, fired almost immediately, went wild. Turning about he fled downstairs and fell to the floor of the hallway below. Following him Miss Billingsly, the jury was told this afternoon, fired two more shots, one entering his head above the temple and the other striking his right hand.
The jury deliberated until a late hour this afternoon, when a verdict was returned to the effect that Miss Billingsly was justified in killing her brother-in-law and that it was done in self-defense.
Both Miss Billingsly and Mrs. Beard, wife of the dead man, testified at the hearing. Both told the jury that the preacher had threatened the life of Miss Billingsly on numerous occasions. So frightened had the girl been, the jury was informed, that Miss Billingsly had kept herself hidden from him for more than a week.
The Rev. Mr. Beard formerly resided in Lincoln county. He had been in Womble about three years. He was ordained to preach in this city two years ago and had traveled about over the county holding gospel meetings at a number of places in the county.
*******************************************************************
Well…….Of course this left more
unanswered questions, the biggest of which was why he had whipped Mary. Had he
been making advances to her or was it simply the case of a young girl resisting
authority? I have very few relatives older than myself that I could question but
found a cousin who descended from Eddie’s eldest son. The story he gave sounds
to me like a “sanitized” story that would be more acceptable to be passed down.
This version states that Mary Jane announced that she was going to become a
telephone operator and Eddie refused to give his permission. She defied him and
that was the cause of the beatings.
I was sent a short memoir written from an interview with Eddie’s daughter. In
the copy prepared for release to the family it simply states,
“He died suddenly at the age of 35."
However, in the handwritten notes taken at the time of the interview the
interviewer wrote, "....came in drunk,
Aunt Mary shot him."
Eddie was buried in Ferguson Cemetery in Montgomery County next to his infant
daughter Naydine who had died just four months before. His wife Cary remarried
and lived until 1962. Mary Jane eventually married and died in 1967.
Though I may never learn the complete story I keep searching and hoping that
I’ll find that one clue or one person who can fill in another piece of the
puzzle. If there is anyone out there who would like more information on this
family or who can offer any tidbits my email address is
Love4Trvl@aol.com.
I leave you with my favorite genealogy quote courtesy of George Bernard Shaw:
If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton……
You may as well make it dance!
A short memoir written from an interview in 1986 with Eddie and Cary's daughter Reta, aged 82. She was about seven when the family moved to Womble and about ten when Eddie was killed. Only including info about life during their time at the Big Four. I find it quite charming and insightful as to life at that time. The bold print indicates preprinted questions:
My family at the time consisted of Momma, Daddy and [brothers] Roy, Louie and Lelion. Aunt May always lived with us too. [NOTE: This is the Mary Billingsley
who shot, my father, Eddie.]
For a living my father was a lumberjack; a
Methodist preacher and a blacksmith during the week; raised peanuts. My mother
cooked for our restaurant and ran the boarding house in the "Railroad town" of
Womble.] My father, Eddie, was a tall handsome man. Everybody liked him,
he always helped people. He died suddenly at the age of 35. My mother is
she was a hard working woman. She always looked older than she was. She was a
little woman; pretty, wore long dresses. Quiet, went about her work. I never
heard her say a cross word. Everyone liked her.
The oldest living relative I remember knowing was Grandma Beard. This would be
Frances "Fannie" Eleanor (Rowe) Beard, wife of Millard Fillmore Beard. She lived
in the woods. She was always a nice person. They say she was hard on my Grandpa,
but I don't know.
The house I lived in as a child was Wambell [sic] (now Norman), Arkansas. Hotel
- 14 rooms upstairs; big dining room; a soda fountain in front of the dining
room; 2 bedrooms downstairs. Daddy had a barber shop and pressing shop up front.
My chores included doing the dishes and I had to sweep the dining room and the
kitchen.
Before we had television for entertainment we went to the show every
night. We played games. Louie and I went to the creek and got tadpoles. We had
no radios either!
For snacks I had all the Coke I wanted! It was one half glass
of Coke and one half fizzy water. The school was up on a hill. One day on the
way, we found 2 nickels in the grass, so we stopped by the store and bought
candy! I missed school for 6 months when I accidentally pulled the 'charging
tank' for our soda fountain over on me. I hit my back and broke it. In the
summer when I wasn't in school I went fishing after our chores. Daddy would take
us to the river. The men used dynamite to bring up fish at night. Louie got lost
one time in the 'cane breaks.'
The most exciting present I ever got was from Daddy coming home from town with a
china doll. It was beautiful! Whenever Daddy went to town he brought back a sack
of candy. It was just sugar - all different colors. We would put the long sticks
in lemon juice and suck the lemon through.
A trip I'll always remember was going
to Grandma Beard's. We went in a wagon to see her. When we got there we went
down in the woods and swamps to play hide-n-seek.
The worst day I remember from my childhood was when Louie and I were walking on
the train bridge and a train came. I ran and got off but Louie was small and
couldn't run very fast. He almost didn't make it. It was my fault because Louie
had told me he heard a train coming and I said no, there was no train.
The day I remember best from my childhood was after Daddy died Momma sold the
hotel/restaurant ('The Big Four'), we moved across the creek. Momma had a house
built.
Edward ("Eddie") Millard Beard
s/o Millard Fillmore Beard & Frances ("Fanny") Eleanor
Rowe
b. 02 Dec 1879 Lincoln Co., AR
d. 08 Nov 1914 Womble (now Norman), Montgomery Co., AR
NOTE: Regarding his given name:
1880 Fed Census: appears as EDGAR M.
1900 Fed Census: appears as MILLARD EDGER
1910 Fed Census: EDWARD
Death Certificate: E. M. BEARD
1951 Handwritten note of widow "Cary:" EDWARD
married: 30 Dec. 1900 Bradley Co., AR Sarah Caroline "Cary" Billingsley
d/o Samuel Ford Billingsley & Telietha Jane Camp
b. 01 Oct 1885 Ashley Co., AR
d. 16 Sep 1962 Los Angeles Co., CA
Womble was renamed NORMAN. Its between Mt. Ida and Glenwood, AR. Its a quaint little village and the citizens have done a good job of keeping it mostly as it was in 1944. There was a railroad and lumber mill. That's where my Grandfather worked. Hatties Cafe had the best hamburgers I ever ate. Wrote Linda, in 2006.
REMEMBERING ARKANSAS 100-year-old Norman sprouted from
railhead sawmill
Tom W. Dillard 18 November 2007 The Arkansas Democrat Gazette
[There are also some mistakes in Tom Dillard's article. He took his material
from the History Book, and that too was incorrect.]
The small town of Norman, in the beautiful mountains of southern Montgomery
County, recently celebrated its centennial. While I was unable to participate in
the events, I did have the pleasure to visit the town recently and talk with
Mrs. Shirley Shewmake Manning, the guiding force behind the celebration. While
Norman is one of the younger towns in Arkansas, the area itself was inhabited by
American Indians for thousands of years. Norman is in a broad valley on the
north bank of the Caddo River, and evidence indicates that human activity
stretched back more than 10,000 years. The town is surrounded by the Ouachita
National Forest, which is only fitting because it was the virgin pine forests of
the area that caused Norman to be formed in the first place. As historian and
archivist Russell P. Baker has noted in his entry on Norman in the Encyclopedia
of Arkansas History & Culture, the town resulted from the construction of a
large sawmill at the terminus of the Gurdon and Fort Smith Railroad on the Caddo
River in 1907. The arrival of the railroad into a new area often brought out the
land speculators. These speculators were already a familiar presence in Arkansas
by 1907. William E. Woodruff, for example, is famous as the founder of the
Arkansas Gazette in 1819, but he actually made most of his income from buying
and selling land. The Womble family, including mother Celia Elizabeth and sons
W.E., Theodore A. and Oscar O., bought all the land around the railroad terminus
in the name of the Womble Land and Timber Co. In 1907, W.E. Womble laid out the
new town and named it after himself. The same year he succeeded in getting
himself named as the town's first postmaster. The new town grew rapidly, which
was not unusual for frontier settlements. The Black Springs Lumber Co. built a
large mill, which was soon joined by the Bear State Lumber Co. Within a year,
the village bustled with activity. Hotels provided lodging for visitors, while
several churches flourished, and the citizens soon had a newspaper of their own,
The News. By Feb. 14, 1910, when Womble was incorporated, it had a population of
552. The Black Springs Lumber Co. provided the economic backbone for Womble, and
later Norman, for two generations. The company evolved from Ingram Lumber Co. of
Kansas City, which had bought large tracts of land along the upper Caddo. The
intention was to build the sawmill at Black Springs, which was supposed to be
the terminus. However, a few landowners fought the extension of the railroad
across their land, and the terminus ended up being about two miles east of Black
Springs. The company kept the name Black Springs. From its founding in 1907
until its demise after World War II, the Black Springs Lumber Co. not only
provided jobs for the area, its 6 a.m. whistle began the day and the evening
whistle signaled the day's end. Trains carrying long lines of flatcars stacked
high with lumber sounded their plaintive whistles well into the night.
W.E. Womble was something of a politician who worked hard to have the seat of
county government moved from Mount Ida, about 10 miles to the north, to his own
town. He correctly noted that Womble was twice as large as Mount Ida, had rail
service, could boast of the Caddo Valley Academy, and in 1914 Womble had become
the home of the new Womble District of the Ouachita National Forest. In 1915,
Womble made the first of three attempts to win the county seat. Each attempt
failed, probably because Mount Ida was much more centrally located. The
campaigns grew increasingly acrimonious, and W.E. Womble was viewed by many as a
troublemaker. He was replaced as postmaster in 1922. In 1925, Womble residents
successfully petitioned to change the town's name to Norman, and the Womble
family left the area. One of the early arrivals in Womble was Dr. John Tillman
Barr Jr., a young minister from Hope, sent by the Presbyterian Church in 1911 to
start a church in the new town. Barr was a graduate of Arkansas College in
Batesville and Presbyterian Union Seminary in Richmond, Va. What was expected to
be a brief assignment turned into a lifetime of work for Barr. He convinced the
Presbyterian Synod to designate Womble as a mission - a "mountain mission" as it
was sometimes called. Barr opened Caddo Valley Academy in 1921. By 1924, the
academy had its own building, which included a large auditorium, a science lab
and a library of 1,200 books. It was to become the first accredited high school
in Montgomery County. Barr organized a strong curriculum, with courses in the
sciences, English, mathematics, history and Latin. The Bible was taught, but
Barr assured everyone that "the study will be confined to the historical
sections, and discussion of matters about which Christians differ will not be
allowed." Eventually the academy building was sold to Norman Public Schools, the
name officially changing after the 1930-31 school year. Barr then established
the Presbyterian Children's Home in the old academy dormitory. The Children's
Home continued until 1962, and Barr died the following year. The 2000 census
counted 423 residents in Norman, with 100 fewer people than in 1910. In recent
years the Norman Historic Preservation Program Inc. (Box 226, Norman, Ark.
71960) has worked to preserve the town's historic high school. The group
recently published a 96-page book on the town.
Tom W. Dillard is the founding editor of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History
& Culture (www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net
), and head of the special collections
department at the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville. E-mail him
at tdillar@uark.edu
History of Womble, Arkansas - The Record (Garland County Historical Society) 14:13 1973
Centennial History of Arkansas By Dallas Tabor Herndon page 896 (1922)
Soon after the completion of the Iron Mountain (now the Missouri Pacific)
Railroad from Little Rock to Texarkana, a station called Gurdon was established
fifteen miles south of Arkadelphia. Subsequently a branch of the same railroad
was built from Gurdon to Womble, Montgomery County, which brought the town into
greater prominence.
Arkansas Business 22 November 1993
The railroad with the most Arkansas short lines is the Arkansas Midland. The
company has four branches around the state that connect with Union Pacific. The
branches include Helena, Hot Springs and Norman (Montgomery County).
June 22, 1908 WOMBLE — G. O. Gilbert of New York City arrived here last night and is staying at the Hotel Caddo, the guest of the Womble Board of Trade. Mr. Gilbert is a member of the company that is contemplating building a road from Mena to Hot Springs by the way of this town.
Otago Witness 11 October 1879, Page 21
"Waiter," cried out out an Arkansas traveller, "bring down my luggage." "What is
it, air ?" " A Bowie-knife, a pair of pistols, a pack of cards, and one shirt."
Canterbury Museum Christchurch: 31 Oct. 2009
Giant quartz crystals from Arkansas, county, unknown. This clear colourless variety of silica is often referred to as rock crystal. The crystal faces have grown naturally and have not been artificially cut. The Museum used funds from a bequest to purchase this specimen in 1983 from Siber & Siber Ltd of Switzerland, dealers in fine minerals and lapidary equipment. The specimen weighs approximately 50 kg (110lbs) and stands about 47 cm tall (18.3"), with its base measuring 30 x 40 cm. (11x15.6").
This specimen is probably not from Montgomery County but from the Ron Coleman mine, formerly called the Coleman mine and the Blocker Lead #4 in older literature. It looks typical for some of the larger crystal specimens that come from that mine in Garland County, near Jessieville. Specimen prices have fluctuated wildly over the past 30 years so it depends upon when the specimen was collected and sold as to what its value might be. I would call these large crystals but certainly not giant! The Arkansas Geological Survey in Little Rock have specimens that were collected from that area during the 1940s that measure 3 feet long and 15 inches in diameter, weighing in at several 100 pounds each!
A large chunk of quartz crystals from Mount Ida in Montgomery County occupies a prominent position at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Crystals at the Peabody Museum on the campus of Yale and at the Smithsonian are identified as coming from Mt. Ida.