Phillips County Historical Quarterly

PHILLIPS COUNTY
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Published by
The Phillips County Historical Society

The Phillips County Historical Society supplies the QUARTERLY to its members. Membership is open to anyone interested in Phillips County history. Annual membership dues are $3.50 for a regular membership and $5.00 for a sustaining membership. Single copies of the QUARTERLY are $1.00. QUARTERLIES are mailed to members.

Neither the Editors nor the Phillips County Historical Society assumes any responsibility for statements made by contributors.

Dues are payable to Miss Bessie McRee, Membership Chairman, P. O. Box 629, Helena, Arkansas, 72342. Meetings are held in September, January, and May, on the fourth Sunday in the month, at 3:00 P. M., at the Phillips County Museum.

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PHILLIPS COUNTY
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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STEAMBOATS AND HELENA

by

T. E. Tappan, Jr.

OMEGA

On Friday afternoon March 13, 1970, at 6:00 P. M., my wife and I walked up the gangplank to board the Delta Queen at the dock at the foot of Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, to make the last weekend cruise of a chartered overnight steamer out of Memphis. In walking up from the main deck to the grand salon on the cabin deck, we stepped back into the nineteenth century.

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Promptly at 8:00 P. M. the Captain ordered the deck hands to cast off. A tug tied on to the stern pulled us out of the Wolf River stillwater into the mainstream of the mighty Mississippi River, and we headed upstream for Caruthersville, Missouri. Buffet supper was served in the Orleans Room on the main deck; all tables were near enough to the windows so that we could watch the Memphis skyline, brilliantly lighted and reflecting in the river, slowly sliding from view.

A change from riding in a car to Memphis at 65 mph, or as some came in on jets at over 300 mph, to a steady push push of the two steam cylinders at about 9 mph is some change, and yet when you went out on the deck and watched the water rushing by, it seemed much faster--but oh so quiet and so smooth.

There were 192 passengers aboard, a capacity crowd; only four had failed to show at Memphis. There were many people from as far away as Washington State, California, Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, who had read of the last trips of the Delta Queen and had brought along their whole family to enjoy an old fashioned steamboat ride. One family brought along its four month old daughter, and she slept beautifully the whole trip, until we docked in Memphis and they stopped the paddle wheel; she promptly started crying.

After supper the tables were cleared from the Orleans Room and there were dancing and entertainment until midnight. Danny Daniels played the Hammond organ, which was originally built for Jesse Crawford, the famous organist; he had added the Leslie Box and Rhythm Box and could really bring the tunes out of that instrument. At times he was accompanied by Eddie Bayard, a New Orleans trumpet player. The two could play any type tune you wanted and any tempo. As it was an older group on the average, old familiar tunes were requested and old

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fashioned dancing was enjoyed by all. If you got tired, you looked out the port side windows and could see the full moon shining on the water.

Saturday afternoon we pulled into Caruthersville at 4:00 P. M., two hours late because the rising water had slowed us up that much. The Chamber of Commerce had made a big thing of our coming, and hundreds of people lined the bank to welcome us; they provided cars and guides to take us around the town, and then back to their new River Museum, which cannot begin to compare with our Helena Museum. Even the Hot Tamale man came along and found a lot of customers off the boat. Someone made the startling discovery that whiskey was much cheaper there than in Memphis, and we noticed many boxes being carried back to the boat.

We cast off at 6:00 P. M. with the steam calliope going full blast. We sailed up the river until about 1:30 A. M. to about the Kentucky state line, before turning downstream. We had traveled some 140 miles upriver from Memphis.

Saturday morning was a time for watching the ever changing scenery along each bank. There is a lot more activity along the river now than a lot of people realize, unless you go down to our river front or read Porter Young's regular Sunday feature "Taming The Mississippi." You do not go very far without seeing a lonely grain elevator close to the river-side, and a few scattered houses that are subject to the overflow, being outside of the levees.

Saturday was also a day for meeting and talking with people from all over the United States. I ran into a lady from Memphis who was able to give me some genealogical information on the Tappan branch of the family that I had not been able to trace. She was a distant cousin of General James C. Tappan.

Saturday night was the CAPTAIN'S GALA CHAMPAGNE DINNER, with entertainment and dancing until

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midnight. It all carried me back to the memory of the trips I used to make to Memphis with my grandparents when we stayed at the Gayoso Hotel and ate in their large dining room in the early 1920s. Good food, excellent service, and & leisurely atmosphere that we have lost in the hustle and bustle of our present population explosion.

Sunday morning was cold and clear, but most everyone was out on the decks watching for Memphis to come into sight. About twenty miles upriver on the east bank there was an Indian settlement and real Indians in native costumes were out to wave at us.

Danny Daniels was at the console of the steam calliope attempting to get it warmed up. The temperature had gotten down into the lower forties during the night and it affected the operation of the electromagnets that allowed the steam to the various whistles. It had many a weird sound, but by the time we reached sight of Memphis he had it going full blast, so we were "Cruising Down The River" at full speed and full calliope blast.

At Memphis, pleasure boats started joining us as we passed under the bridges and south to McKellar Lake entrance, where we had a complete tour of McKellar Lake--seeing the U. S. Engineer Fleet tied up there, and the dock facilites of the many concerns who use water transportation. From there we went back to the Mississippi River and upstream to the docks at the foot of Beale Street, where we debarked at 5:00 P. M.--thus concluding a restful, quiet weekend.

All of this comes to an end in November 1970, because of government regulations concerning seagoing vessels that are required to have steel superstructures for fire safety. The Delta Queen accidentally came under these seagoing regulations. Her owners feel that she should be exempted from these, as she is never more than two to three

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minutes from either bank, and could quickly nose into bank and the passengers get off safely. There is legislation before Congress now to exempt the Delta Queen from these regulations. We hope that Congress passes it.

The Delta Queen has a most interesting history, and the Helena Library has a copy of a book, Delta Queen, The Story of a Steamboat, by Virginia S. Eifert. There is also the book, The Saga of the Delta Queen, by Captain Frederick Way, Jr., a pilot who was aboard when she was towed from San Francisco by way of the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal and Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans, then up the Mississippi and Ohio, when she was purchased by the Greene Line, the present owners. I recommend that you read both of these books if you are interested in Mississippi River stories.

My interest in the river goes back to my childhood days, as I grew up here in Helena and remember riding on the last of the side-wheeler packet boats, the Kate Adams. Then too I enjoyed reading of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and their adventures on the Mississippi River. I recently reread Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain, and found it much more interesting than I remembered when I read it as a boy.

ALPHA

Now going back to the beginning of steamboating and its influence on Helena and Phillips County, we find that the Mississippi River Valley was settled by immigrants from two main sources. Some early settlers came by way of horseback and wagons from the states of Virginia and Carolina, shortly after the War of 1812, into Tennessee and later into Arkansas. Others followed the Ohio River, floating down on keelboats or flatboats to the Mississippi River, then stopping off wherever they felt there was a good spot to build homes and towns that were on high enough ground to be safe from the spring

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high waters. Memphis, Helena, Natchez, and Vicksburg were among the earliest settlements because the hills or bluffs provided safety without levees.

The invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton, and the first successful voyage of the Clermont up the Hudson River in 1807 led to the building of the New Orleans, the first steamboat built for western waters. The New Orleans made its first trip down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1811.

The New Orleans is variously pictured as a side-wheeler and a stern-wheeler and was 148.5 feet long, 32.5 feet wide, with a draft of 12 feet (these dimensions were derived from seagoing vessels designed for crossing the Atlantic), and soon proved to be unsatisfactory for Mississippi River traffic. Experience soon showed that the boats should be wider and draw less water, as you will see in the specifications of boats built later.

The New Orleans' maiden trip coincided with two very alarming natural phenomena. As it landed in Cincinnati October 1, the comet of 1811 was lighting the skies, and many people thought because of the noise of the steamboat, the comet had fallen in the Ohio River.

A few days later the greatest earthquake ever to strike North America, the New Madrid tragedy of 1811, seemed to grasp the little boat as if resenting the intrusion of steam to challenge Father Mississippi's long reign. She finally reached New Orleans in January,1812, so she must have passed by the future site of Helena during December,1811.

At this time there was supposed to have been a settlement by the name of "Little Prairie" (also listed as "Big Prairie" in the June, 1967 Quarterly, Page 31) near the present site of Helena, which was destroyed by the New Madrid earthquake (Page 5, December, 1964 Quarterly).

A final note concerning the voyage of the New

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Orleans--a shipboard romance. The Captain of the New Orleans wooed and married the maid of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Roosevelt, passengers on board. Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt's first child was also born on board during this trip.

Nicholas Rightor, who had already been in the vicinity for several years, laid out the City of Helena in 1820, just eight years after the first steamboat passed. Many people had moved in from the "sunk lands" of the New Madrid disaster area, and had been given public lands in the amount they had lost.

Another factor favoring the settlement in the Helena area was the start of the Louisiana Purchase survey on October 27, 1815, by Joseph C. Brown as Deputy U. S. Surveyor. The survey started a base line from a point at the confluence of the St. Francis and Mississippi Rivers running due west. On November 10th, they met a crew headed by P. R. Robbins who had started at the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, this being the fifth principal meridian running due north. The intersecting point of these two lines became the starting point of the survey of all the land in the Louisiana Purchase.

The United States, during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, made the Louisiana Purchase of 827,000 square miles of land from France on April 30, 1803, for about fifteen million dollars. This figures out to about two and one half cents an acre. Two million acres in the state of Arkansas were set aside for military bounty land, for soldiers of the War of 1812, and this too accounted for the rapid increase of population in Arkansas, from 1,062 in 1810 to 14,273 in 1820. Now you must remember that this was wild country at that time and populated with unfriendly Indians.

Helena was incorporated as a town in 1833. During this period steamboating had made great strides and hundreds of boats were operating on the

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river, and the owners frequently made enough money in one season to repay the cost of building the boat. Many were not so fortunate and lost their boats to snags, sandbars, and explosions.

During the period 1820-1840, many families moved into Helena and some of their descendants are still living here--as listed in other Quarterlies, there were: Fleetwood Hanks, F. S. Hornor, and William F. Moore (who was the father of S. C. Moore, my stepgrandfather, one of the C. L. Moore Brothers). Family records indicate that William F. Moore came in 1828. (The Quarterly of December, 1964, Page 13, states that he came down in a flat bottomed boat about 1832 or 1833.)

Some people built houses on rafts and floated down the river until they found a likely spot, bought a lot and moved the boat house on land and gradually improved it as they prospered. One such house that I know of is on Columbia Street. It was built in Booneville, Missouri, probably about 1870, and floated down. I do not have permission from the family to reveal any further information on this house at this time.

Early in the 1800s, coal was transported from the mines of western Pennsylvania down the Ohio and Mississippi. There was no economical way to get the boats, scows, or rafts back up the river. Therefore a disposable, cheaply made coal barge was developed that was left wherever the coal was sold. They say that most of the older houses in New Orleans were built out of lumber from coal barges or keelboats that were sold or abandoned at the south end of their journey. This practice continued so far as coal barges were concerned well into the 1900s, and many of the barges ended up here at the Tappan Coal Company on Ohio Street. When they were emptied, they were broken up for kindling or salvaged as usable lumber for building purposes.

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BETA (BATTLE)

Back during the Civil War years, steamboating was hit severely. Boats were conscripted by the navy for war use and some were made into tinclads, ironclads, and some into hospital and supply ships. Many were sunk in war and in peaceful pursuits during that time.

During the Civil War, Memphis and Helena were captured early by the Union forces. The Confederate forces held Vicksburg in one of, the longest sieges in modern history and were able to keep the Union armies from using the Mississippi as their main supply line.

Helena became the jumping off place and supply base for the major campaigns trying to break the river blockade at Vicksburg.

One of the most interesting attempts to flank Vicksburg was initiated by the Union Navy at Helena and called the Yazoo Pass Expedition.

The Yazoo Pass, through Moon Lake into the Coldwater, Tallahatchie, and Yazoo Rivers, was at one time known as a steamboat short cut to Vicksburg from Helena. However, about 1856, landowners had constructed a dike or dam 100 feet thick and 18 feet high across the north end of Moon Lake about six miles below Helena, to protect their crops in high water.

General Grant ordered Lieutenant Colonel James H. Wilson, his chief topographical engineer, to Helena January 29, 1863, with orders to open the Yazoo Pass. He, with his working party, boarded the tinclad Steamer Forest Rose, and the rest of the fatigue party followed in the Steamers Henderson and Hamilton Belle. They were able to breach the levee by February 3.

Upon receipt of Grant's message concerning the opening of the Pass, Lieutenant Commander Watson Smith, commander of a division of light drafts, was

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to:

...proceed with the steamers "Rattler" and "Romeo" to the Delta near Helena, where you will find the "Forest Queen" engaged in trying to enter the Yazoo Pass. You will order the "Signal" (steamer), now at White River, to accompany you; and if the "Cricket" comes down while you are at Delta, detain her, also the "Linden."

Lt. Commander J. P. Foster with his boat, the "Chillicothe" will also be ordered to accompany you.

You will obtain coal enough from Helena to enable you to carry on operations for some time. Your vessels had better all go to Helena and start from there with as much coal in tow (say two barges) as will answer...

In the meantime Confederate forces had heard of the plans and sent crews in to fell trees along the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers. Union forces found these blocking their way, and also in many places the trees grew together over the streams and hit the smokestacks of the steamboats. The Union forces had to send back to Helena several times to conscript work crews to help the soldiers clear the logs.

The Union Navy finally managed to get six gunboats and about eighteen or twenty small transports into the Tallahatchie River by March 7.

The Confederate forces in the meantime had blocked the Tallahatchie at Fort Pemberton by sinking the Steamer Star of the West crosswise in the middle of the stream. (Thus, in the Tallahatchie River, far from the open sea, the Star of the West found her grave. The historic steamer which had drawn the first shots fired in Charleston Harbor on January 9, 1861, had been seized by Confederate

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authorities in Texas and taken to New Orleans. Prior to Farragut's capture of New Orleans, the oceangoing Star of the West, along with many other river steamers, was taken to the Yazoo.)

The Union Navy's attempt to flank Vicksburg failed at Fort Pemberton and the flotilla took six days to return to Helena, reaching there the night of April 10, 1863.

If you would like to read the complete text of this expedition, you will find it starting on Page 142, Chapter III, of Decisions in Mississippi, by Edwin C. Bearss, in the Helena Library. Mr. Bearss is the historian who supervised the raising of the ironclad gunboat Cairo, which was sunk at Vicksburg in 1862.

Vicksburg surrendered July 4, 1863, the same day as the Battle of Helena.

After the end of the Civil War, when General James Camp Tappan returned to Helena by steamboat, he found his furniture on the dock ready to be loaded to be taken home by Union officers who had occupied his home during the occupation of Helena. He ordered that the furniture be returned to his home and it was done. (I have two of the tables that were General Tappan's.)

SIGMA

Steamboats. Many things happened to them in and around Helena. The following newspaper clippings have been gathered from various sources; Helena Library scrapbooks and Cossitt Library, Memphis.

One of the first accidents of record was the explosion of the General Brown, November 25, 1838, tied up at the Helena Harbor. Many prominent people who were visiting on board as well as passengers were killed.

This is from a copy of an old newspaper

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clipping without date, that is in the possession of the Sterling Owen family, at Evansville, Mississippi near Tunica.

"Before the Civil War Captain Thomas Bowman operated the Steamer St. Francis, number one in the Memphis and St. Francis River trade, going down the river as far as Helena, then up the St. Francis as far as Madison, and as high as the water would permit. During the war he discontinued the business, but immediately after the war he returned with the Mobil Hamilton and resumed his trade, making two trips per week.

There were many little romances associated with Captain Bowman's boats. His wife, familiarly known as "Mother Bowman," made her home on the boat, and felt it her duty to look after the pleasure and safety of the lady passengers, especially when unaccompanied by a male escort. Knowing they were perfectly safe while with Mother Bowman, ladies unaccompanied would wait the arrival of their boat to make a trip to the city of Memphis or elsewhere.

I recall one incident that I think worthy of mention. There lived in Austin a young and promising physician unmarried; a friend wishing to add to his happiness desired to present him to a very popular young lady. He arranged for the young lady to take a trip to Memphis under the chaperonage of Mother Bowman, and without his knowing it, induced the young physician to board the boat at Austin for a like trip. Of course, an introduction followed, which ripened into love, and the result was that very soon a beautiful wedding occurred in Helena, and the popular and handsome young Miss Tappan became the wife of Dr. R. W. Owen. Upon their return after the wedding a reception and ball at Austin were given in their honor. Mrs. Owen is still with us and beloved by everyone."

Miss Tappan, mentioned above, was Sarah Elizabeth Tappan, born November 20, 1844, married Dr.

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R. W. Owen in 1869. She was the daughter of Edmund Swett Tappan, who was a first cousin of General James Camp Tappan; also she was the older sister of James Alexander Tappan ("Make Way For The Major," September, 1969 Quarterly) and Samuel W. Tappan I.

This clipping puts her in the Helena area before her brother, Samuel Williamson Tappan I, who came to Helena in 1883. General James C. Tappan had encouraged many of his nephews and cousins to move to Helena, as he considered Helena a promising place to relocate and start over in the trying times after the Civil War.

*

(This article will continue in the next issue of the Quarterly.)

***

MEETING OF PHILLIPS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Phillips County Historical Society had a most interesting meeting on September 29, with Mr. Gibson Turley as speaker for the occasion. His subject was the Battle of Helena, and it was very appropriate that the place of meeting was the site of some of the hardest fighting of that day, July 4, 1863. The meeting was on Graveyard or Reservoir Hill, the position of Battery C during the fighting.

About sixty people turned out on a fine, cool Sunday afternoon, and were made comfortable on top of the hill through the provision of chairs by Mr. Turley and Mr. Tappan. Using a map to show the routes into town that the entering Confederates took, and with a view of Helena at hand, Mr. Turley was able to portray realistically the events of that bloody day.

It was interesting to watch the cars climb the straight-up hill, and to see those who came by horseback and minibike.

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A VIEW OF PREHISTORIC LIFE

by

John Connaway

"An Indian's Day"

If you were an Indian man living in the Mississippi River "Delta" sometime between the years 200 and 800 A. D., what would a typical day in your life be like? Perhaps you would be out in the forest hunting deer and other game with a hickory bow and cane arrows tipped with small chipped flint points. It probably would have taken you about fifteen minutes to chip out a good hunting point from a river pebble, pressing off flakes with a section of deer antler, and fastening it firmly to the end of the cane shaft with sinew. Then split turkey feathers could be tied onto the other end and your arrow would be complete. Or you might be using a short spear or dart propelled by a spear thrower or atlatl, a stick with a bone or antler hook at one end which fits into the base of the spear. In essence, this atlatl acts as a longer throwing arm and gives the spear a more powerful thrust. If you kill a deer you must remember that every part has a use; the hide for shoes, clothing, and carrying pouches; the meat for food; the sinew for bow strings and sewing cord; the antlers and bones for tools, weapons, and ornaments, all very important items in daily use.

While you are hunting, what is your wife doing back in the village? More than likely she is making clothes from the hides of previous hunts, using a bone needle and deer sinew to sew together the pieces she has cut with her chipped stone knife. She may be scraping the fat off the hides from yesterday's hunt with a stone scraper, keeping the fat

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for cooking and cosmetics. She may be grinding seeds from the goosefoot and pigweed plants to make bread, using two flat smooth rocks as milling stones. While she is grinding the flour, a small fire is burning in a shallow pit dug in the ground just outside the house. Above this pit, suspended from a tripod of green tree branches, is a fire-hardened clay pot in which the bread as well as the deer meat will be cooked.

The pot itself had been completed two days ago, when your wife placed it in a shallow pit and burned dry cane and sticks over it to bake it brick-hard. Before the pot was sun-dried and then fired, she had taken a small cord-wrapped paddle and made impressions with it in the moist clay. The pot had been made by rolling the clay and coiling it in a circular motion to build up the sides, then smoothed with a flat polished stone. The clay had been dug out of the nearby riverbank.

Later in the afternoon your wife and children were helping to rebuild your cousin's house at the other end of the village. It had burned down the night before when a spark from the fire caught in the dry thatched roof. After the debris had been cleared away, the men, using hoes made of deer shoulder blades, had dug a trench where the walls were to be. Long poles of hickory and ash were set in this trench a few inches apart, the trench was filled, and the poles were bent over to form an interwoven framework for the roof. Large mats woven of split cane were tied to the outside of the walls. Over this was applied a plaster of mixed grass and clay, called wattle and daub. This would dry in the sun and become a good insulation against the winter cold. The roof was thatched with bundles of grass which were allowed to hang over the sides of the house, thus preventing the rain from washing away the plaster. A small door covered by a cane mat was left at one corner of the fifteen foot wide house.

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You had not killed a deer, but on your way back to the village, had attempted to kill a black bear which was eating honey in a hollow tree stump. Unfortunately, in the ensuing battle with the wounded bear, one of the hunters in the party had been severely mauled. You had tried to treat his wounds with wild herbs, such as the powder of the puffball which acts as an external coagulant, but to no avail. By the time you and the other hunters reached the village he was dead. At the age of twenty-seven he had become one of the best and bravest hunters in the village. Accordingly, he would be buried with highest honors in the mound. During the night the women of the village bemoaned his passing with death chants amid the slow rhythm of two hollow log drums. The following day everyone attended the burial ceremony. The hunter had been dressed in his finest buckskin clothes and was placed in a shallow depression on the side of the small mound which had been built over the grave of an important clan leader a few years back. The hunter's best spear and knife were placed beside him for use in the next world. Around his neck hung an engraved pendant made from a conch shell. After the customary rituals and a few well chosen words for the benefit of the forest spirits who were about to receive the hunter, all the women began hauling basketloads of dirt to the mound and dumping them over the body, subsequently raising the height of the four-foot mound to six feet. In the years to come the mound could reach a height of over twelve feet and include as many as sixty graves.

The following week it was decided that since the hunting had been relatively poor lately, some of the villagers should devote more time to fishing in order to supplement their diet. While some of the women were out on their daily rounds of gathering nuts, berries, edible roots, and firewood, others remained behind to weave nets out of bark fibers or vines. These would be used along with

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spears to catch fish in the main river channel four hundred feet from the village. At the same time some of the men would use certain berry or bark juices to smother fish in a small backwater pond about a mile downstream. Some of the fish would be smoked and dried for trade with groups who lived in more arid regions.

A trading party containing five or six men was preparing to leave in a few days and everything had to be ready in time. They were taking tools and weapons of stone and bone, hides, dried fish, cane, and fresh water mussel shells. Later parties would be going to south Louisiana for salt; to the Gulf coast for sea shells and sea food; or to the mountains of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to get mica for ornaments, greenstone for tools, and soapstone for pipes. The present party was leaving for the North to obtain copper from the Great Lakes region and flint from Ohio. All groups were instructed to bring back food and goods that weren't available in their own area. The men would paddle upriver in a large dugout canoe. This canoe had been made from a cypress tree trunk by alternately burning the inside and chipping it away with stone adzes and chisels. They would probably make contact with other groups upriver who had the goods they sought. Such trading was common and widespread at that time.

"Archeological Reconstruction"

Occasionally one of these trading parties would bring back, in addition to material goods, an idea, such as a new design they had seen someone placing on their pottery. This exchange of ideas accounts for many style changes through time, not only in pottery design, but in tool and weapon design, such as those found in arrow or projectile points. These changes may be in the style or design of an artifact just as well as in the method of

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manufacture. Just as styles in clothing or designs in cars change today, so did those of pottery in the days of the Indian. Just as we can tell the year a car was made by observing the design, so can the archeologist relate from a pottery style the time period in which it was most predominant. The study of such changes in styles through time, called seriation, is but one of the methods used by archeologists to reconstruct the past.

Since the Indians of this area had no written language, the only way we have to recreate a picture of everyday life in the prehistoric Indian community, as I have very briefly done here, is through the scientific techniques of archeology. By the use of horizontal and vertical controls in the excavation of an Indian village site, the archeologist can measure not only the number, size, and method of construction of houses, but sometimes the number of earlier occupations of the same site, including much of the way of life of each of these occupations. Information about religious and burial practices, as well as some social customs, can be learned from the excavation of a burial mound or a cemetery using essentially the same techniques.

By studying the tools, weapons, utensils, houses, etc., and by determining how they were made and used, the archeologist begins to form a picture of life as it was. Of course, only non-perishable artifacts remain, except in very dry climates. Therefore, the archeologist must try to determine what other materials were used by their probable relation to the artifacts he finds. For example, he knows that many houses were built with split cane mats on the walls because he finds chunks of burned clay with cane impressions in them. When a house burned, the clay plaster on the walls was fired hard and, as a result, became an imperishable artifact. Many times even the construction of a house roof can be determined from the positions in which the charred timbers fell to the floor. Occasionally,

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even the social structure of society within a village can be reconstructed by studying the village plan, that is, the interrelationship of the location of various types of structures within the village and the artifacts they contain.

Such interrelationships among features, as well as many other prospective sources of information, found in an excavation can be combined, studied, theorized about, recombined, restudied, etc. by an archeologist until finally, with a little luck and imagination, he can come up with a pretty good picture of a way of life few white men have ever seen and no present day man can appreciate properly until he has tried some of it himself. For example, how many of us could sit down right now and make an arrowhead out of a rock, fasten it to a piece of cane, make a bow, and take it out and kill a deer with it?

It should be pointed out that once a part of a site is disturbed by digging or by cultivation, the relationship between the features of that area and the rest of the site is destroyed. This association, known as context, among the features and artifacts of a site is the primary key to archeological reconstruction. Without the proper techniques and recording procedures used in archeology, random digging, plowing, etc. can destroy forever a large amount of valuable potential information. This is why we should stress preservation, to allow those trained in these techniques a chance to extract this data from the ground.

The archeological programs of today are facing the serious threats of lack of funds and personnel, as well as the rapid destruction of prehistoric sites by the onslaught of modern agricultural, land clearing, and land leveling practices, and the expansion of urban construction. It has been said that at this present rate of destruction, the majority of sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley will

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be gone in another fifteen to twenty years. It is heartening to know that many people are beginning to realize the importance of preserving these sites for the educational benefit of future generations. Amateur archeological societies composed of such interested people have been formed in most states and have done an invaluable job of helping the professionals in their job of reconstructing the past. Many states, such as Arkansas, now have state supported archeological programs employing professionals who can work with the amateurs. We can all do our part by reporting the locations of Indian sites to our state archeological societies or surveys, by helping to educate others about the importance of site preservation, and, where possible, by setting aside sites or portions of them on our own property for professional investigation. It could be said that a greater knowledge of the past is but one step toward a better understanding of what we need for a happier and more peaceful future.

***

Helena Weekly World, May 18, 1898.

Italian Music At Library Tonight

The young people have secured the Italian Band and will dance at the Library Hall tonight. This band is by far the best music ever heard in Helena and a treat is in store for all those who come out. Society will be out in full force and if you have not checked someone, the list can be seen at The Old Reliable's office.

***

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ABSTRACT OF EARLY MARRIAGE RECORDS OF PHILLIPS COUNTY

(continued from Volume 8, No. 3)

by

Dorothy James

Marriage Record Book "B" is missing from the County Clerk's office, but a typed transcript of this book appears in Marriage Transcript Record Book 1, pages 1 to 142, both inclusive, and covers the period from February 21, 1832, to December 20, 1847 (filing time of marriage certificates).

The following names are from Index of Marriage Records Book 1 (there is no index in Marriage Transcript Record Book 1), and a comma has been inserted following the surname of the bridegroom, and entries have been numbered. A question mark following any name indicates the uncertainty of translation. Note that many names have been spelled phonetically.

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THE CASE OF THE MARTHA WASHINGTON

by

Dale P. Kirkman

Part I : The Tragedy and the Ohio Trials

The Martha Washington was a side-wheeled steamboat enroute from Cincinnati to New Orleans, that caught fire and sank near the landing at Island 65 south of Helena, during a cold January night in 1852. This in itself was not an unusual occurrence, as on that same day and on the preceding day, two other steamboats on the river had gone down after explosions and fires. But the swells of anger and indignation caused by the sinking of the Martha Washington widened and extended themselves onto the national scene, and several years passed before they completely subsided.

The steamer went down at 1:30 A. M. on the 14th of January, in a river that must have been full of ice, for the Southern Shield of Helena reported ten days later that no steamboat had come down for several days because of the ice. The boat sank in from three to five minutes after catching fire, but the officers and men were saved by the James Millinger going north and the southbound Charles Hammond. All the cargo, books, and papers were lost, but that was not all that was lost. Various accounts gave different totals for the private passengers who met their deaths by fire that night, ranging through: "several": "a man, wife, and two children in lady's cabin, a man in gentleman's cabin, and one on deck": "fifteen or sixteen": "many," including a family of four and the boat's carpenter: "sixteen deaths": "nine people killed." Perhaps no one knew certainly.

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The deaths of these unknowing and unaware passengers was a tragic thing, but it appears that what started the multitudinous investigations of the affair was an alleged attempt to defraud an individual shipper and several eastern insurance companies, including the Atlantic Insurance Company of New York, by a group of a dozen conspirators. According to voluminous court testimony given afterwards, they had put on board a great load of dummy freight, boxes of stones and rubbish, and then fired the boat with the purpose of collecting $100,000 of insurance money, and with no regard for any deaths brought about by the holocaust.

It is curious that the several female relations of the defrauders aboard escaped with their lives, while the other passengers did not. This was explained later by the fact that, after finding that the family of four had $1,500 in gold with it, its members were placed in a part of the cabin that was fired with no chance of escape out onto the deck.

In previous years, there had been many steamboat burnings with resulting deaths, on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Some were thought to be criminal affairs, but there had never been enough evidence to prosecute. Congressional testimony given in the House of Representatives in 1854 described the "extensive combination" of men, mostly from Kentucky and Ohio, as extending in its operations from New York City to New Orleans. Cargoes were insured in different states, false bills of lading were made, and then the true cargoes were not shipped. Enough insurance was carried to make this false cargo and boat burning profitable. The Martha Washington became something of a test case.

The story of the valueless freight started at Cincinnati with the firm of L. L. Filley and Rufus Chapin, boot and shoemakers, and dealers in sheep-

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skins. In late 1851, because of financial difficulties, the firm was sold to Lyman Cole. But goods of the original Filley and Chapin Company were supposed to have formed the main part of the shipment on the Martha Washington, goods that witnesses who helped load the crates said were nonexistent by that time, because there was no such stock at the firm, and because the loaders had helped pack the trash that was in the crates.

Filley and Chapin's place of business had been a hangout for all or almost all of the gang: for Amasa and Lorenzo Chapin, secret partners in the business: for their brother, Adams Chapin: for Captain Cummings of the Martha Washington: for Lyman Cole, William H. Holland, and Alfred Nicholson. Lucius Filley perhaps had not been aware of the criminal scheme being planned, and he testified that he was appalled at what he overheard of the planned burning, and scared of the threats made to him if he revealed the plans. He was one of the accused in the early days of the case, but he died in the summer following the burning, and so did not figure in the Helena trials. However, before his death, he verified that the boat was set afire to defraud.

There were many lawsuits and criminal prosecutions following the burning of the boat, a veritable maze of them. Fraudulent insurance policies, fraudulent cargo, a nonexistent firm to which the goods had been consigned in New Orleans, questionable ownership of the boat itself, and later, charges of arson and murder---all of these things had to be cleared up.

An article in the Arkansas Gazette of October 2, 1938 said that the investigations were launched because of a resentment of a passenger on the Martha Washington, Mrs. Charles Chapin, who directed her first hand information to Sidney Burton, a manufacturer of Cleveland, Ohio, who had a small legitimate cargo on board, and who was unable to

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collect insurance on its loss. But probably the insurance companies involved had as much to do with the beginnings of the campaign as Burton, and they reportedly spent thousands of dollars in their pursuit of the men who were responsible for the affair. (William Kissane and Lyman Cole, supposed to have carried the largest insurance policies on the cargo, also were assigned the largest amounts of bail later--and were considered to be the most responsible for the tragedy.)

Kissane, Filley, the Chapin brothers, Nicholson, Cole, and “others," were indicted in a circuit court of Ohio for conspiring to burn the Martha Washington to defraud the insurance companies, a charge brought by Sidney Burton and, one assumes, the affected insurance companies. This must have occurred in 1852, the year of the burning and while Filley was still alive, as it is known that he died that summer.

Congressional testimony said that the men were arrested in out-of-the-way places, costing a great deal of money, and made possible by the keenness of the officers on the search. After the trouble and expense of rounding them up, a long trial was entered upon in Ohio. Testimony went on to say that the Government did not get all its evidence to the jury because of manipulations on the part of defense counsel, and the defendants were acquitted.

This trial must have been the one at Columbus, Ohio, resulting in accquittal for all. William Kissane had previously been tried at Lebanon, Ohio, and then at Cincinnati, where he was convicted. His "new" trial was probably with the group at Columbus. The Ohio trials were a preliminary to the trials at Helena.

Part II : The Trials At Helena

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The trials stemming from the burning of the Steamer Martha Washington caused a great deal of excitement in Helena and in the county. The boat and its cargo caught fire in the early morning hours, and the uncertain number of passengers who were quickly carried down within the boat's confines were victims of the fire itself. This fearful accident happened within the jurisdiction of Phillips County Circuit Court, and the charges brought against the perpetrators of this supposed criminal act resulted in indictments of murder and arson of twelve men.

The men who were to be brought to trial were the captain of the vessel, John N. Cummings, and his partners in crime who were responsible for the fabrication of the dummy freight on board: William H. Holland, Benjamin A. Earle, the four Chapin brothers, Adams, Amasa, Lorenzo, and Rufus, William Kissane, Lyman Cole, William Kimball, George P. Stephens, and Alfred Nicholson, clerk of the steamer (also named as James G. Nicholson in some accounts). Cincinnati, Ohio was the homeport of the Martha Washington, and this was where the burning plot had been conceived.

When the men were extradited to Arkansas in 1854 on a murder charge, by requisition of Governor Elias N. Conway, there had been a lot of difficulty in finding them. Some of them had been located by police officers at the Walnut Street House in Cincinnati (one of the arresting officers had already had to spend a part of the year 1852 finding them for the Ohio trials), herded into an omnibus in irons, and then sent to Helena by steamer from Cincinnati and by another steamer from Jeffersonville, Indiana. According to the Democratic Star of Helena of March 15, 1854, Rufus Chapin was sick in bed at the Walnut Street House at the time of the arrests. Days later, though under guard, he colored his whiskers, changed his

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clothes, and escaped from the hotel, driving fifty-five miles before daylight to reach a railroad station, and killing the horse while doing so.

The Star also reported in the same issue that the last two prisoners arrived in Helena during the second week of March, 1854. William Kimball had been arrested in New York City, and Amasa Chapin was found in Wisconsin. Stephens and Nicholson were never located to be arrested for the charges, and were thought to have fled to California which later happenings seemed to verify. This left eight men to languish in the "horrible" Helena jail for three months, as Kimball was soon released because of illness and lack of evidence.

Legal talent was not lacking. The cases were to be tried before Judge Charles W. Adams, later a Confederate general, and now judge of the 1st Judicial Circuit. Memphis had sent down "the flower of her bar" to take the part of the defendants, Judge W. T. Brown, “the pacing orator," E. M. Yerger, "the great jurist of Tennessee," and Honorable E. W. M. King, these men to be aided in taking the depositions by Joseph B. Clark of Pennsylvania, known in the North as "the man with the yellow vest," and in Helena as "the man with the shocking bad hat and countenance." Robert D. Holmes of New York was also a member of the defense counsel, as was Colonel Absalom Fowler of Little Rock. Local defense talent included Judge Thomas B. Hanly, Sylvanus Phillips' son-in-law and former judge of the 1st Judicial Circuit, James B. Jackson, Mark W. Alexander, and J. T. Crary.

Henry A. Badham was State's Attorney (and it did not matter much that he was charged and fined for betting at faro during the November term of court when the cases were finally resolved, as, after all, the same charge had been made against Judge Hanly), and Major John C. Palmer, James Theo Moore, and Rogal F. Sutton, all of Helena, and

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and Albert Pike of Little Rock spoke for the prosecution. Forty years later, when Dr. Charles E. Nash wrote his Reminiscences, he said that the prosecution "was conducted by one man only," Peter E. Bland of St. Louis, who was his uncle and stayed with him during the trials. This may have been so, but this is the only mention of Bland found thus far.

The hearing of the case on a writ of habeas corpus took several days, and on March 13th, Judge Adams gave his opinion. According to the Southern Shield of March 18th, Judge Adams read a long decision and asked for the prisoners to be discharged. The Star of the 15th did not interpret facts in the same manner as the Shield, and it said that Adams' decision was adverse to the prisoners and they were remanded to jail. At any rate, they both agreed that the men would be brought before an Examining Court of three justices of the peace on the following day, on a trial for commitment, and this was done before A. C. Robertson, James H. Neil, and Joseph W. Sebastian.

Prosecution wanted more time for the preparation of its case, for the assembling of witnesses, and for the taking of depositions. A continuance was granted until April by the Examining Court, when the witnesses for the prosecution still had not arrived, and it ended up going until the May term of court.

In May, the Examining Court said that the State had good reason to think that an offense had been committed by the men in question, and it remanded all of them to jail except for Captain Cummings, whose release it recommended. He and Kissane, who was the only one able to give bail, were out of jail for a few days. Then the Grand Jury brought its indictment, and since they were included in it, they were rearrested and brought to jail. It was declared that trial would be continued until the next term of court, starting on the

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fourth Monday in November. In the meantime, the Star reported that Mrs. Rhoda Chapin of Worcester, Massachusetts, mother of the Chapin brothers, had committed suicide.

The spring and fall of 1854 had been times of excitement and prosperity in Helena, because of the many people brought to town in connection with the Martha Washington trials. Robertson's Commercial Hotel on Front Row (Water Street) near the wharf boars, was overflowing with police officers, witnesses, relatives of the men in jail, reporters from afar, lawyers, and people whose purposes were unknown. It was customary in that time to list recent arrivals at local hotels in the town's newspapers, as this list was considered to be interesting to readers. During a two week period in April, the Commercial Hotel had paying guests from Boston, New York, Kentucky, St. Louis, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington City, and other places.

Helena at this time had about 700 people, and there must have been a crowd indeed with all of the out-of-town visitors and residents from out in the county who came in to witness the activity. The case had attracted national attention, as it was the most recent of a long line of criminal acts on the Mississippi. When the courthouse bell rang on the days of the preliminary hearing, all of town crowded in, and Dr. Nash said that he and Pat Cleburne were always among the lot. The courthouse at that time stood about where Feldman Commission Company is now, on Ohio Street.

Several northern reporters stayed in Helena through March, April, and May during the time that the Examining Court was hearing testimony and until the Grand Jury brought the indictments of murder and arson. One of these reporters was a representative of the Cincinnati Times, and he wrote several dozen articles for his home paper, some of which were reprinted in the Helena papers. He signed

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himself "Invisible," and he did well to make himself so, as his articles vacillated between speaking well of the townspeople and their efforts and jeering at the town's past and present. He got in over his head when he told a long tale about old settler Sylvanus Phillips having been buried standing up, not expecting that Phillips had relatives and descendants still around.

This same reporter also wrote that an incident in the spring during the period of the Examining Court's work nearly did away with some of the prisoners before they got to the November term of court. They were being taken back to jail after court had adjourned for the day, through the crowds. One of the disgusted prisoners made the remark that he could whip any fifteen Helena men by himself. With that, pistols clicked in pockets in the crowd, and for a few moments it appeared that the trials would not be necessary. Many of the townspeople lost sympathy with the prisoners at this point.

The editor of the Star, who about this time resigned his editor's position forever, and then took it up again in a couple of weeks, expressed things well. He said that the trial "like a wounded snake, still drags its slow length along."

It is hard to tell exactly why local opinion so favored the men in the Helena jail, but it did--even months before the final trials got underway, and in spite of incidents such as the one just mentioned. When they were released on bail during the summer months and until the November term, it was because the leading citizens of the county had come forward as their securities, and apparently were eager to act in that capacity.

Dr. Nash gave his own reason for favoring the defendants. He said that he was against Captain Cummings and his co-conspirators until he heard a detective for the insurance companies testify over

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a period of several days at the trials. The man had a well planned speech and the spectators felt that he was so bad that he would testify to anything if paid enough.

In May, bail for the murder charges was set at $10,000 for each, but on application for reduction of the amount, it was fixed at $8,000 for Kissane and Cole, the most perfidious of the lot, at $6,000 for Captain Cummings, and at $5,000 for each of the others, with all out on $1,000 bail for the arson charges. Then the first bail wa lowered again, slicing $3,000 off every amount.

During the summer, Kissane and Cole committed a forgery on the Chemical Bank of New York. Friends said they were driven to it in desperation, because of the expenses of the several different lawsuits of the past two years. Whether that was true or whether he was just keeping his hand in, Kissane was known to have a criminal record. It was said that he was without a rival in forgery and swindling, being one of the most expert forgers in the United States. Some of the other men of the Martha Washington cases had been involved in bank swindles in Cincinnati, but they did not have Kissane's talent. He was a young man of twenty-seven years that summer, who had had a pork business in Cincinnati turning over $1 million a year. Along the way he had learned how to tear up paper money bills, and make eleven bills out of ten. This was what he tried on the money issued by the New York bank.

Kissane and Cole were arrested, Kissane escaped and was recaptured, and they were tried and sent to Sing Sing for two and a half years. Kissane did not stay there long, for the governors of Ohio and Indiana both asked for his release, as he was needed as a witness in too many other cases. He was well known among district attorneys of the middle states. But Kissane and Cole missed the Helena trials, and their bails were forfeited. Now

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there were six men left to stand trial.

Captain and Mrs. Cummings' stay in Helena caused some little interest among local residents, and many thought him to be innocent. The Captain's beautiful wife was said to have had a powerful influence on the "flexible" jury (whatever that is), according to Hallum's History. Dr. Nash said that though she was a very attractive and accomplished person, she was also quite retiring, did not try to influence people in Cummings' behalf, and Hallum should not have said that she swayed the judgment of the jury.

Dr. Nash went on to say that Cummings had letters of introduction to Helena citizens from important men in St. Louis, offering sparkling character references, and intimating that anything illegal emanated from the insurance companies and not from Captain Cummings. The women of Helena had brought him food in jail, and when several leading men of town had asked that he be released from staying in jail, Sheriff Arthur Thompson had compromised by agreeing to let his wife, if she wished, lodge with him in his room in the courthouse.

The trials finally got underway in November term of Phillips County Circuit Court, with the murder trials coming first. It took some days to empanel a jury, as defense counsel challenged many of those called up for duty. A jury¹ was hard to get, for most people had already made up their minds about the guilt or innocence of the men.

In the spring when the prosecution had been trying to round up its witnesses, defense counsel

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¹The jury was listed as Alexander Barnett, John O. Bowden, Isaac McDonald, William A. Thorne, Douglas Saint, Samuel Bell, Robert P. Simpson, C. T. Thompson, L. L. Andrews, Andrew Elliott, John Parragon, and S. W. Mitchell, with the last named, upon

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submitted interrogations propounded by 165 witnesses, all of them listed in Circuit Court Record Book 12. Except for one or two names, these were not Helena people. By fall, the chief witness to the murder of one Daniel Fox on board the steamer, had died, but the witness' testimony before the Examining Court in the spring was admitted as evidence. There was not evidence enough, an entry of nolle prosequi was made in the record, and the accused were let go on the murder charges.

The time was now December of 1854, almost three years after the Martha Washington had burned, and Cummings, Holland, Earle, and the three Chapins were starting on the arson trials.² Judge Adams decided that except for the Captain and Holland, the mate of the steamer, all others should be discharged for want of jurisdiction in the case. Capatin Cumings was declared not guilty, and an entry of nolle prosequi was recorded for Holland and the others. So their long day at Helena was done.

During the year, attempts had been made in Congress to assist Phillips County and other parts of the country in paying for such trials as those coming from cases like that of the Martha Washington. Representative George Bliss of Ohio tried to have funds appropriated at that time to pay for the prosecution of the cases in Phillips County, as he thought the affair of national interest. Representative Samuel Parker of Indiana pointed out that the Mississippi River is a highway of the United States, and a county as sparsely populated as Phillips County just did not have funds enough to carry out

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giving a satisfactory excuse, being replaced by--name unknown.

²This jury was composed of George W. Thompson, W. W. McAfee, Pleasant Bumpass, Barney W. Cox, Jesse Hayes, Alexander Henderson, John F. Elliott, James Turner, Lewis Simpson, Allen Early, Ephraim Goble, and James Manly.

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the prosecution of the men charged with actions on the river, without government aid. Two separate bills were introduced, each for the amount of $15,000, to help bring the criminals to justice, but to no avail.

After the acquittals at Helena, Sidney Burton brought the charges against the men again. He may have done this to be sure that Kissane got in on the charges, and Burton had been instrumental in having Kissane released from Sing Sing. There was to be a hearing on the case in a New York court in December, 1855, but the death of Sidney Burton that month at Cleveland, Ohio, apparently ended the charges.

Burton had died under suspicious circumstances in a hotel there, perhaps a victim of poisoning from another hand, and perhaps not. For that same month, the Grand Jury of Hamilton County, Ohio, had found a true bill against him and one of his witnesses for perjury. According to the Cleveland Herald as reprinted in the Southern Shield of Helena of December 29, 1855, Burton had been writing his autobiography for a New York publishing house which would have been startling in its revelations about some important people. He was to be paid $15,000 for the book, but since only one-fifth of it was done at the time of his death, it was without value. His family was left with nothing.

The cases arising from the burning of the Martha Washington never lost some of their mystery, and all of the circumstances surrounding the affair were never totally clear. Some years after the trials at Helena, men came and took the records of the cases under seal to California. There seemed to be some uncertainty as to who the men were, and uncertainty as to what they planned to do with the records. Perhaps there were more trials there.

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REFERENCES

Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, Arkansas. Issue of October 2, 1938. "Burning of A Steamer," by Old Timer.

Democratic Star, Helena, Arkansas. Issues of 1854; March 15, March 22, March 29, April 5, April 19, April 26, May 3, May 10, May 24, May 31, November 30, December 7.

Hailum, John. A Biographical and Pictorial History of Ark. Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1887. Page 308.

Lloyd, James T. Lloyd's Steamboat Directory and Disasters in the Western Waters. Cincinnati: James T. Lloyd & Co., 1856. Pp. 322-324.

Nash, Dr. Charles E. Biographical Sketches of Hindman and Cleburne with Reminiscences of the Civil War. Little Rock: 189?. Pp. 48, 50-51.

New York Times. Issues of December 27, 1852; January 10, 1953; March 10, 1855; December 10, 1855.

Phillips County, Arkansas. Circuit Court Record Book 12. Pp. 235, 260, 265-6, 284-5, 314-5, 323, 327-8, 337-9, 371-3, 379-80.

Southern Shield, Helena, Arkansas. Issues of January 24, 1852; February 21, 1852; March 18, 1854; December 29, 1855.

Speech of John C. Palmer on the Trial of John N. Cummings For Arson, December 16, 1854. Printed by the Southern Shield, Helena. Owned by the Phillips County Museum. Pp. 4-6, 8-11.

True Democrat, Little Rock, Arkansas. Issues of March 17, 1854; May 17, 1854.

United States. Congressional Globe. 33rd Congress, 1st Session. December, 1853-September, 1854. Pp. 844-5, 873, 1449, 1519.

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PATRICK R. CLEBURNE

Be It Remembered that on this day Patrick R. Cleburne, came and appeared in Open Court and first duly sworn, says on oath that he has been a resident of the United States for five years next preceding the date hereof, and of the State of Arkansas one year-that he will well and truly support the Constitution of the United States, and that he does absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty, whatever, and particularly that of Queen Victoria, the present reigning Sovereign of Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. Whereupon it is declared by this Court that the said Patrick R. Cleburne and he is hereby entitled to all the Rights, Privileges and immunities of a naturalized citizen of the United States of America, as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the same. And the Clerk is hereby ordered to furnish the said Patrick R. Cleburne with a certified copy of this Order of this Court.

Ordered that Court adjourn until Court in Course. Charles W. Adams Judge. Phillips County Circuit Court, November Term, 1854.

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THOMAS C. HINDMAN

Now on this day T. C. Hindman Esq. came and appeared in open Court and having been duly licensed to practice as an Attorney at Law in this State, and taken the oath required by law, It was ordered that the name of T. C. Hindman Esq. be and the same is hereby enrolled as a member of the Bar.

November Term of Court, 1854.

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ARKANSAS GAZETTE, August 8, 1826.

Helena. Yesterday at 12 o'clock a steam saw mill, built by Messrs. Porter and King, in the upper part of our little town, was pit in operation, with two saws. It runs extremely well and cuts fast. This mill was built from the stump in 2 1/2 months, under the direction of Mr. Porter, with not more than from four to six hands. It adds greatly to the prospects of our town by furnishing the means of building without a resort to the tedious and laborious mode of cutting out planks with the whipsaw.

Mr. Woodruff, the editor of the Gazette, made the following comment upon the news item about the saw mill: This, we believe, is the first steam saw mill ever erected in the Territory of Arkansas--indeed, we do not know of any machinery whatever in the territory that is propelled by the power of steam. We hope the enterprising proprietors will be followed by others in the different sections of the territory where a sufficient water power for similar purposes cannot be conveniently obtained.

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HELENA WEEKLY WORLD, June 1, 1898.

Captain Barlow has an attractive show-window. People stop to look at it, as they pass by. The show consists of a piece of artillery, with long gun swab and three piles of balls ready for use. Above the gun is a drawing of the protected cruiser Raleigh and a picture of Lt. Tappan. The drawing was made by Richard King. The gun has been named the Dewey, which is proof that it is all right. There is also a good picture of Rear Admiral Dewey in the window. Capt. Barlow was an artilleryman in the late war, and thinks there is no fighter like the man who can handle a battery to prefection. He likes the way Dewey handles the big guns, -and who does not?

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PHILLIPS COUNTY FAIR, MARVELL. Sept. 28-Oct. 3.

The Phillips County Historical Society won 4th place with its booth at the Fair, which brought a cash award. There was a display of farm and hand tools, dating back to the 1850s, and used by farmers in Phillips County. The display also included early automobile accessories. These particular exhibits were made originally for the Helena Museum by Nathan Cohen, a member of the Historical Society. There were other interesting items displayed, including several pieces of furniture. The booth was manned during the nights of the Fair by Mrs. Dick Cunningham, Mrs. F. O. Griffin, Sr., Mrs. Betty Heidelberger, and Miss Jean Etoch.

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The following letter was sent first to the Phillips National Bank, and then forwarded to the Historical Society.

507 West 19th Street
Lumberton, N.C. 28358
August 11, 1970

Dear Sir:

I wonder if you would help me in a rather unusual matter. My grandfather was president of the old National Bank of Helena from 1893 to 1897. At that time, national banks issued banknotes, and the bank president would sign each one.

Would you have any information or ideas on how I might get one of the banknotes signed by Jacob Trieber of the National Bank of Helena? I certainly would appreciate any help you might be able to provide.

Yours very truly,

J. Marshall Trieber

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MEMBERSHIP ROSTER 1970-1971

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*Sustaining member
°Deceased

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