Jefferson County

We took the liberty of changing the abbreviations of first names (Jno, Geo, Chas etc.) to full spellings and also added alternate spellings to some of the surnames. We have transcribed this same directory for different states, and the enumerators seem to often use phonetic spellings. Names that seemed odd we checked out through census listings and Findagrave and added what we thought might be correct. Some were VERY odd (did not even come up in a Google search), but we could not figure out what they were probably supposed to be, so we just left them. Submitted to Jefferson … Read more

Mention has already been made elsewhere of that pre historic race of people known as Mound Builders who held sway long before the Indians and the French arrived in the Mississippi Valley. There have been found remains of these first inhabitants in the shape of mounds or pottery in Jefferson County, but so few in number as to be hardly worthy of notice. The Indian population of the territory now embraced in Jefferson County varied at different times, but the earliest known and somewhat fixed occupants of these wilds were the Quapaws, who claimed the land from the Mississippi to … Read more

If it be remembered that in 1813 a county was first formed by the Missouri Territorial legislature along the Arkansas River, and so given a name; and that the same body erected Lawrence in 1815, while in 1818 it formed Clark, Hempstead and Pulaski, it will be seen that Jefferson County must have been formed after Arkansas became a Territory, as it did in 1819. It was a decade following this, however, and meanwhile four counties (Miller, Phillips, Crawford and Independence) were made in 1820, one (Chicot) in 1823; three (Conway, Crittenden and Izard) in 1825; three (Lovely, St. Francis … Read more

Under the French governors, Sanville ( 1699), Bienville (1701), Cadillar (1713), de L’Epinay (1716), Beinville (1718), Boisbriant, Perier (1725), Bienville (1732), Vaudreuil (1742), Keleric (1753) and D’Abbadie (1763), there seems not to have been so much settlement within the limits of Jefferson County, as during Spanish reign under Govs. Ulloa (1767), O’Reilly (1768), Unzaga (1770), Galvez (1777), Miro (1785), Carondelet (1789), Lemos (1793), O’Farrell (1798) and Salcedo (1800). Even after the United States secured it, and from 1804 to 1812, when subject to the power of the governor of Indiana Territory, William H. Harrison, it is not known at what … Read more