--Photo by Leroy Blair, 2000

Faulkner Cemetery

Pangburn, Arkansas

• List updated March 1, 2006
• Legal description:  SW, NW, SE, Sect. 2, T9N, R8W  
• Earliest listed grave:  1887, William D. Faulkner (photo, left)
• Last listed grave: Active
• Arkansas Archeological Survey site #:  3WH0687

This cemetery was originally listed for the White County Historical Society on January 1, 1963, by James Snowden and Cloie Presley.  It was updated August 18, 2000, by Society member Leroy Blair who found six grave sites that were not on the original list.  He returned in December 2004 and double-checked the information below with what he saw on the tombstones.  After his first visit, Blair reported,  "I found 26 graves marked with rocks or concrete slabs with nothing printed on them.  This cemetery is located at the northeast end of Pangburn.  To reach it, take Highway 124 one-half mile to Howell Road and turn left (north); go a half-mile on this dirt road.  The cemetery is back in a pasture field but is fenced in and is fairly clean."

William David “Dee” Faulkner, a local Methodist minister who owned a farm adjoining this cemetery, was buried here in 1887, when the cemetery apparently was started and named.  His widow, one son and a grandson were also buried here.

According to a family history donated to the Searcy Public Library by Dee’s great-grandson, James H. Faulkner of Little Rock, William David was one of the first settlers in the Pangburn area in the early 1850s.  Dee was 25 when he married Eliza Jane Floyd, 16, in 1853 and began a family that would include 14 children.  The 1860 census showed that he had real estate valued at $2,500 and a personal estate valued at $1,000.  He homesteaded 267 acres of river bottomland.  He died at 58 of a heart attack while working alone in his cornfield near the Little Red River.

The family name has been recorded as Folkner and Fortner as well as Faulkner.  The 1860 census recorded the name as Fortner.   An 1870 tax receipt spelled William’s last name Faulkner.   On the other hand, the name William D. Folkner was written by a relative on the back of the photograph of Dee shown above. 

 Also, Dee and Eliza’s son John Wesley signed his marriage license J.W. Folkner when he married Della Ester Morris of Tyler in 1901.  And he received a Methodist minister’s license in the same Folkner name eight years later.   John and Della lived near here during the first years of their marriage.  They both taught at a school across from the Henderson Cemetery.  An early Pangburn resident, Leon Van Patten, recalled, “My grandmother babysat for Mrs. Della Faulkner.  She kept a horse at school so that she could come back home to let the baby nurse at noon and recess.”  John and Della later built a large home in downtown Pangburn and moved there.   John Wesley Faulkner was only 38 years old when he died and was buried in Faulkner Cemetery.   John and Della’s infant son Orville was also buried here.

In January 2006, Della’s daughter Mildred Moody Crook, 89, of Searcy told the White County Historical Society that John W. and Orville were buried in Faulkner Cemetery and moved to Henderson Cemetery many years later.   Mrs. Crook, who said her mother had told her this story, did not know the year that the graves were moved. There is no date on Orville’s headstone, which suggests it was placed by someone other than Della, who died in 1979.   John Wesley and Della had four children together.  After his death she married Ellis Moody of Pangburn and they had one daughter, Mildred.  The marriage didn’t last and Della reclaimed the “Faulkner” name.

 The printed Faulkner history in the Searcy Library shows that J.W. Faulkner had a twin brother named Jake.  He may also be buried in an unmarked grave in Faulkner Cemetery.  He was only 13 when he died just months after his father’s death.

In November 2005, James Burke of Toronto, Canada, contacted the White County Historical Society after visiting the Faulkner Cemetery site on the Internet.  He stated that his family records confirm that William D. Faulkner, who was his great-great-grandfather, is buried here, also Dee’s wife Eliza and their granddaughter Minnie Euphenia Anderson.  Burke said that Minnie is his grandmother, the daughter of Dee and Eliza’s daughter Virginia, who married Branson “Bran” Humbard, grandfather of famed TV evangelist Rex Humbard.  Burke said family records indicate that “Jennie” Humbard was buried here after she died at Gregory in Woodruff County, where she was living with one of her daughters. Virginia’s marriage to Bran Humbard is mentioned in “My Life Story – From the Plow Handle to the Pulpit” by Alf E. Humbard, the father of Rex.   Burke said that the Floyd Franklin Boyles on the burial list was his grandfather who was born near Brod Head, Wisconsin, and homesteaded a place on the Heber Springs road near the Cleburne-White County line. 

 For additional details on the Faulkner family, see "Whirlwind – Story of the Faulkner Family From Pangburn, Arkansas" by James H. Faulkner in the Arkansas Room at the Searcy Public Library.

If you have corrections or additions to this list or other information on this cemetery, contact the White County Historical Society, P.O. Box 537, Searcy, AR 72145.