Early History of Phillips County

The Land, the Legends and the Lore

by Patty Smith

Published 2020

The First Wave of Settlers

For decades, Helenians have traversed the Low Road for various reasons. Gloria Tappan told of bicycling to the creek at what we now call Pippengerville to gather water cress for the evening salad. Another old timer stated that many a courtship began on that old road. She went on to say, “But telling my mother I lost my shoe on the Low Road was not the best idea I ever had.” It was, and still is, an awesome road to navigate, but few today know, or remember, the historical significance of the two roads in our national forest and state park that lead to Bear Creek in Marianna. Those two roads, known locally as the Low Road and High Road, played a major role in the history of our area.

The earliest structure of any permanency, built by white men in this area, was Fort St. Francis, located on Crowley’s Ridge, at the mouth of the St. Francis River. Built in 1738, it was used in the French campaign against the Chickasaw Indians. It contained Officers quarters, barracks, a powder magazine, bake houses, a hospital and warehouses. It was destroyed by the French themselves in 1739, after the campaign, so that the British could not gain access.

While the earliest known history of the area was largely a French history, Spain was a close second in wanting to gain control of the lands we would call Louisiana Territory. From 1763 to the 1800’s, it was Spain who was encouraging settlers to move to Arkansas. The land was a vast wilderness with plenty of game and prime farm land. One explorer, traveling from New Orleans to obtain salt, wrote in 1752, that the land along the Mississippi and St. Francis Rivers was covered in deer, buffalo and bear. He spoke of the constant noise of the comings and goings of swans, cranes, geese, bustards and duck. In fact the noise was so great he was unable to sleep at his campsite. There were also sightings of panther, and ‘kittens’ (bobcats) as large as twenty pounds.

It was this land, with its early wealth, that drew the early trappers, settlers and missionaries. One good season of trapping and hunting could fill a raft or flatboat with hides to be taken for trade to New Orleans. Weston Goodspeed told of a man who brought 480 buffalo tongues (a delicacy in the early years) to New Orleans, taken the previous winter on the St. Francis River. Bear oil, buffalo robes, and sun dried meat was also gleaned from the area and transported down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. It was a trapper’s and hunter’s paradise, and afforded men many opportunities.

Salt was also plentiful in the area around Stomp (Stamp) Creek, (what we now call Storm Creek). The very name Stomp Creek was given to the stream because the deer would stomp the ground to get to the salt. Men would come for miles to collect the salt and then barter it in New Orleans.

For others, it was a chance to begin anew, to claim one of the eighteen land grants bestowed after the war, to stake unclaimed land in uncharted wilderness, and for some, a place to escape the penalties of murder, robbery and gambling debts. And so they came, and with them came the determination, courage and fortitude to clear the land and build the first settlements.

By 1805, there were twenty-seven documented families living in and along a stretch of the Low Road, from what we know today as the Clancy Farm all the way to Phillips Bayou. Some of the settlers lived in poverty, with one traveler stating that he came upon a ramshackle log cabin with one acre of cleared land. The owner of the cabin was using the butt of his gun to grind corn on a stump for his family. Others, such as Sylvanus Phillips (our first settler who came in 1797), William Patterson, Phoebe Dunn, Daniel Mooney and William Russell fared much better, and with hard work were able to maintain a decent livelihood.

This area, along the flowing waters of the Mississippi, was the beginning of our local settlement history. Soon the second wave of settlers would come, and towns, grist mills, saw mills, churches and cemeteries would fill the area along the Low Road, a road that even today is filled with a natural beauty and remains, for the most part, unblemished by the hands of man.

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Primary sources for these articles include the Phillips County Historical Quarterlies, Shinn's Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas; Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas; Down the Great River by Glazier; Arkansas Historical Documents and Land Grants; The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture; Courts and Lawyers on the Arkansas Frontier; Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi; USGenWeb; Ancestry.com; FamilySearch.org; Phillips DNA Project.