Esley P. Stone, born on October 26, 1824, in Pennsylvania, was a successful farmer and stockman in Arkansas. The son of Elias and Rebecca (Key) Stone, he moved with his family to West Virginia in 1831 and later to Arkansas. In 1850, he married Sarah McKown, with whom he had ten children. Stone enlisted briefly in the Confederate Army in 1863. He bought 160 acres of land from the government in 1853, building a log cabin with a puncheoned floor. Stone was an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Green Grove Lodge No. 107 in Conway, Arkansas.
Esley P. Stone, as a farmer and stockman, has been very successful in life. He was born in Pennsylvania, October 26, 1824, and is the son of Elias and Rebecca (Key) Stone, and a grandson of James and Barbara (Garrison) Stone. James Stone was a spy in the Revolutionary army, serving as such the entire period of the war. Elias Stone was of Pennsylvania origin, and his wife originally from Maryland. In 1831 they immigrated with their family of nine children to West Virginia, four of the children being born in Pennsylvania, and five in Virginia. After farming for eighteen years in the Old Dominion, Elias Stone again emigrated, locating on a farm in Arkansas, where he died in 1866, and his wife in 1881. Our subject commenced business for himself at the age of twenty, working for his father when his help was needed, and entering the employ of others by the day or month as he felt inclined.
In 1850 he married Miss Sarah McKown, a daughter of Gilbert and Lydia (Flesher) McKown, natives of Pennsylvania and Virginia, respectively. Their children are: Elias J. (born June 5, 1851; married Mary Ann Browers, is a farmer and resides in Boone County), Hester (born October 1, 1853, married Mr. Green Hogan, and is now deceased), Job (born October 8, 1855, married, and now lives in Stone Township, Conway County), John M. (born December 1, 1857, and married Miss Lucy Smith), Amos K. (born March 10, 1860, died at the age of two years), George and Stewart (born May 29, 1862; George died November 14, 1863, and Stewart died September 13, 1865), Robert E. Lee (born September 5, 1864), Margery (born February 8, 1867, and married Mr. Joseph Beaver, and resides in Conway), and Lydia Rebecca (born March 14, 1871).
Mr. Stone enlisted in Lieut. Hughey’s company of Arkansas Volunteer Artillery in 1863, but served only a short time, owing to sickness, when he was sent home by the surgeon of the Military Post Hospital, at Dardanelle, Ark., and held by the Confederate army at the time. When Mr. Stone came to Arkansas, there was an abundance of game, geese, wild turkeys, and other fowl, etc., and wolves were numerous. In 1853 he bought land from the government at the graduation price, which was 12 1/2 cents per acre, purchasing 160 acres on which he erected a log cabin, and as there was no sawmill convenient, floored his cabin with split and hewed logs, called puncheons. They now have something that is quite a curiosity at this day, in the shape of a cabin with a puncheoned floor, and resting on land purchased from the government. In 1852 Mr. Stone put in a crop of thirty-five acres of corn and cotton on his father’s place, and from this crop realized proceeds sufficient to stock his own farm. In 1853 he pre-empted his farm of 160 acres, and erected the cabin before mentioned, and in 1854 proved up and paid the fee. At the time of the purchase, there were twelve acres of land under fence, into which he put a crop of corn, cotton, and wheat, yielding 229 bushels. A much larger crop might have been realized with the improved machinery of today. He formerly ground the meal for the family on a double-cranked steel-mill, by hand, after the corn became too hard to be used on the grater.
Mr. and Mrs. Stone are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as are also Margery, Elias, and Hester; and Mr. Stone belongs to Green Grove Lodge No. 107, at Conway, Ark. In politics, he is a Democrat. He is a gentleman who contributes largely to church, school, and in fact, all enterprises worthy of support.