What’s New?
1947 Prairie Grove City Directory
In Polk’s 1947 Washington County directory no phone numbers or street addresses were provided. The listings below contains the name of the head of household, and when a name is included between ( ) it represents the given name for the wife of the head of household. This listing provides an idea of the size of the town and the amount of commercial activity it had in 1947.
1878 Jefferson County Arkansas Farmer’s Directory
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...
Franklin County Arkansas Obituaries
The following are historical obituaries of Franklin County residents. Butler, Amanda Ruth Caire, Joseph Clay, Argus Dee Foster, Guy W Hansberry, Mrs A J Harris, John C Hibbard, Thomas Marshall Hill, Kowanda Hoel, John Jennings, Ellen Jewell, Audrey (Marshall) Jones,...
Washington County Company to California
In 1849 the “gold fever” reached the county. and many of the citizens became infected with it. From a letter written in April, 1849, to the Van Buren Intelligencer, the following facts concerning the Washington County company which went to California are gleaned.
Sale of Fayetteville Lots
The lots were sold chiefly at public sale, A. Whinnery being the auctioneer. These sales in the aggregate amounted to 86,339, of which nearly the whole sum was expended in the erection of public buildings. The following is a statement of the sales up to 1837, the...
Stark’s Battery
Battery A, First Arkansas Light Artillery Volunteers, known as "Stark's Battery," was raised by Denton D. Stark, then adjutant First Arkansas Cavalry. "April 1st the battery was full," so says the adjutant-general's report, "but was not...
Sixteenth Arkansas Confederate Infantry
The Sixteenth Arkansas Confederate Infantry was organized under Gen. McCullough's order, at Rogers (then Calahan Springs), about the middle of November, 1861, with the following officers, the list being made most complete when there is Washington County...
Washington County, Arkansas Post Offices
The number of post-offices established in Washington County from 1829 to 1888 was ninety-five, with names of postmasters and dates of appointments, as follows: Ada: Archibald Borden, July, 1857; Hugh Rogers. July, 1858: discontinued February, 1867. Albia: Jacob Yoos,...
Presbyterian Churches, Washington County, Arkansas
The Presbyterian Churches in Washington County are members of the Presbytery of Washbourne, named in honor of the Rev. Cephas Washbourne (or Washburn), who was an early missionary to the Indian nations, and who was probably the first Presbyterian preacher to hold...
Washington County, Arkansas Poor Farm
In January, 1852, James P. Neal, William M. Bowers and A. W. Brownlee were appointed to select and purchase a poor farm. At the April term they reported that they had purchased the farm of Elias Muncie in Township 17, Range 29 west, containing eighty acres. It was...
Ozark Institute
On May 19, 1845, Rev. Robert W. Mecklin, having withdrawn from The Far West Seminary, opened a well-attended male seminary about three miles northwest of Fayetteville, and gave it the title "Ozark Institute." Its reputation spread throughout the region, and its...
Official Report of Attack on Fayetteville
HEADQUARTERS POST FAYETTEVILLE, ARK., April 19, 1863. MAJ. GEN. S. E. CURTIS, Commanding Department of the Missouri: General: The following report of the battle of yesterday, at Fayetteville, is respectfully submitted, in addition to the telegraphic dispatches of last...
Arkansas Genealogy is being developed as a genealogical and historical resource for your personal use. While the original thought was to provide this website as a resource for finding genealogy and historical data concerning Arkansas on the web, we have begun adding specific data to this site for your personal use.
The first settlement by Europeans in Arkansas was made in 1686 by the French at Arkansas Post (later the residence of the French and Spanish governors, important as a trading post in the earlier days of the American occupation, and the first territorial capital, 1810-1820). In 1720 a grant on the Arkansas was made to John Law. In 1762 the territory passed to Spain, in 1780 back to France, and in 1803 to the United States as a part of the ” Louisiana Purchase.” Save in the beginnings of western frontier trade, and in a great mass of litigation left to the courts of later years by the curious and uncertain methods of land delimitation that prevailed among the French and Spanish colonists, the pro American period of occupation has slight connexions with the later period, and scant historical importance. From 1804 to 1812 what is now Arkansas was part of the district (and then the territory) of Louisiana, and from 1812 to 1819 of the territory of Missouri. Its earliest county organizations date from this time. It was erected successively into a territory of the first and second class by acts of Congress of the 2nd of March 1819 and the 21st of April 1820. By act of the 15th of June 1836 it was admitted into the Union as a slave state.
Arkansas History
Today we take up on the history of Arkansas as a part of the Territory of Louisiana, to when it became known as the Territory of Arkansas, and finally statehood. Brief mention is also made of secession and reconstruction in Arkansas and the government makeup of the time.
- Louisiana Territory
- Arkansas Territory
- Secession in Arkansas
- Arkansas Reconstruction
- The Poland Committee
- Leaders of Arkansas Territory
Today I posted additional pages on Arkansas history which cover the exploration, and early settlers of Arkansas before it was a state.
- Ferdinand de Soto in Arkansas
- Marquette and Joliet in Arkansas
- La Salle, Hennepin and Tonti in Arkansas
- The Bubble of John Law
- Proprietary Change of Louisiana Territory
- French and Spanish Settlers in Arkansas
- Early English Settlers in Arkansas
- The New Madrid Earthquake
I have begun the process of creating pages on Arkansas history, and have posted the first two:
Surrounding States
- Louisiana Genealogy and History
- Mississippi Genealogy and History
- Missouri Genealogy and History
- Oklahoma Genealogy and History
- Tennessee Genealogy and History
- Texas Genealogy and History
Featured:
History of the First Assembly of God, North Little Rock, Arkansas
The prophet Joel's proclamation some 800 years before Christ foretold the time when God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh. The first of such outpourings occurred in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost. Then, periodically, throughout these intervening 20...
The Poland Committee
If there can be anything comical in a tragedy it is furnished just here in the fact that, in the twinkling of an eye, the adherents and voters of the two governors had changed places, and each was now fighting for the man whom he had opposed so vehemently. And in all...
Secession in Arkansas
March 4, 1861, a State convention assembled in Little Rock. The election of delegates was on February 18, preceding. The convention met the day Abraham Lincoln was inducted into office as president of the United States. The people of Arkansas were deeply concerned....
Louisiana Territory
In the preceding chapter are briefly traced the changes in the government of the Territory of Louisiana from its discovery to the year 1803, when it became a part of the territory of United States. Discovered by the Spanish, possessed by the French, divided and...
The New Madrid Earthquake
The New Madrid earthquake of 1811-12, commencing in the last of December, and the subterranean forces ceasing after three months' duration, was of itself a noted era, but to the awful display of nature's forces was added a far more important and lasting event, the...
Marquette and Joliet in Arkansas
Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit priest, had made expeditions along the Northern lakes, proselyting among the Indian tribes. He had conceived the idea that there was a great western river leading to China and Japan. He was joined in his ambition to find this route,...
Leaders of Arkansas Territory
The secretaries of Arkansas Territory have been: Robert Crittenden, appointed March 3, 1819; William Fulton, appointed April 8, 1829; Lewis Randolph, appointed February 23, 1835. Secretaries of State: Robert A. Watkins, September 10, 1836, to November 12, 1840; D. B....
La Salle, Hennepin and Tonti in Arkansas
Nine years after Marquette and Joliet's expedition, Chevalier de La Salle came from France, accompanied by Henry de Tonti, an Italian, filled with great schemes of empire in the new western world; it is charged, by some historians of that day, with no less ambition...
The Bubble of John Law
The Chickasaws were the dreaded enemy of France; it was they who hurried the Natchez to that awful massacre; it was they whose cedar bark canoes, shooting boldly into the Mississippi, interrupted the connections between Kaskaskia and New Orleans, and delayed...
French and Spanish Settlers in Arkansas
The successful class of immigrants to the west of the Mississippi were the French Canadians, who had brought little or nothing with them save the clothes on their backs, and an old flintlock gun with which to secure game. They colonized after the French mode of...
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