The story of an Arkansas frontier town that went from a booming County Seat to a ghost town to a cow pasture.
By Laveral Rogers
Copyright
What started out as a trading post in the early 1800's developed into a booming frontier town, wild and woolly. The young town was named Jackson, Arkansas. Jackson was located on one of the Southwest Trails that formed a network of former Indian trails that crisscrossed the country connecting St. Louis and the Red River valley of northeast Texas. The trail would also be called The Old Military Road and eventually one of the Trail of Tears traveled by some of the estimated 60,000 Native Americans that was forced to leave their ancestral homes in the southeast and move to the new Indian Territory defined as 'west of Arkansas', in present-day Oklahoma.
The town was located about two miles north of the Imboden crossing on the Spring River, yet far enough from the river to avoid the spring floods that plagued the area along the river. Within the boundary of Jackson, an ever flowing spring furnished water for the entire town. Jackson consisted of several log homes, a blacksmith shop, hotel, jail, church, schoolhouse, some taverns, one large general store with a post office, courthouse, a cemetery and a hanging tree. The Hanging tree, was a solid white oak tree that stood near the road about 200 yards from the blacksmith shop on the north side of town. The jail was purposely built on the outskirts of town because when, not if, a prisoner broke out of jail, they wouldn't be likely to hurt any of the town's citizens. In 1829, Jackson was the county seat of Lawrence county, Arkansas, and saw it's share of fights, robberies and murders.
Sheriff J. M. Kreykendall, Judge T. S. Drew, later to become governor of Arkansas in 1844, and Coronor Thomas Black, had their hands full trying to keep law and order in the frontier town. On July 13, 1831, Mrs. Polly Hillhouse was shot and killed by a negro slave, named Jarrett. Mrs. Hillhouse's daughters were busy down at a spring, washing cloths and upon hearing the gunshot, ran to the house and found their mother dead. The murderer fled into the nearby woods but was tracked to Missouti, captured and brought back to stand trail at Jackson. Jarrett was found guilty of the murder of Mrs. Hillhouse and hanged from the hanging tree on Friday, December 23, 1831.
Under the Andrew Jackson administration, the Federal Indian Removal Act in 1830, authorized the removal of thousands of Native Americans from the southeast to Indian Terrirory by way of water and land, thus the 'Trail of Tears' or nunahi-duna-dlo-hilu-i "the trail where they cried".
The Choctaw is believed to be the first major tribe to be re-located to Indian Territory along with the Chickasaw, the Seminole and other smaller tribes. The Cherokees had fought removal to the very end, by way of court and through Congress but eventually had to succumb to the white man's wishes.
In the year of 1838 and 1839 the Cherokee's long trek began. Some traveled by river but most traveled overland in large caravans. Wagonloads of possessions followed each other but most of the Cherkees had to walk barefoot without enough clothes or blankets to keep them warm. Many of the group died from infectious dieases such as cholera, dysentery, measles and smallpox. One such group of Cherokees containing about 1200 people, traveled over the Military Road that passed through Jackson. This group was led by John Benge.
The winter caught them near Jackson. The Military made arrangements for them to camp outside of Jackson on the creek that ran on the east and south of town. The winter was bitterly cold and several of the group died there at Jackson that winter and was buried along the creeks edge in unmarked graves.
The Military made arrangements with a Jackson merchant, the Ringgold and Redmon Company, to supply food and other materials for the Cherokees through the winter of 1838 and 1839. Legend has it, that the Merchant never got paid for the supplies, went bankrupt and had to go out of business.
The county seat remained at Jackson until 1836 when it was moved to Smithville, Arkansas. This removal was made necessary by the creation of Randolph county on October 29, 1835, from the part of Lawrence county that Jackson was situated in.
The once booming town of Jackson, Arkansas is gone forever. Most of the travelers that pass by the gravel road intersection of Old Union Military Road and the Old Jackson Cemetery road, has no idea that a once rambunctious, wild and woolly frontier town and ,no less, the county seat, once stood where they are standing!
All that can be seen now, are cows grazing near the creek, the old white oak hanging tree, now just a snag rotting away on the ground and a sign pointing to the old cemetery.
Folk sometime don't know what to think of the cows that, from time to time, stand staring at the creek, as though seeing or hearing something or someone that human eyes can't see or the wailing of the cold winter wind in the trees that line the creek bank or is it really the wind wailing that they hear? Is it really colder down by the creek or does it just seem to be? A-yi-a-wa in nv-wa-do-hi-ya-dv. Rest In Peace!
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