Hunting Forebears in Huntsville

 

by Pa Rock

Grave Robber

Yesterday afternoon in my never-ending quest to dig up more dirt on my ancestors, I drove over to the town of Huntsville, Arkansas, which is in the northwest part of the state just a few miles from Eureka Springs, often referred to as the "gayest town" in the "Natural State."   Mother Carrie Nation, a sweet older lady who gained fame for swinging an axe as she destroyed saloons, once lived in Eureka Springs, and several of my ancestors once lived in and around Huntsville.

My grandfather, Dan SREAVES, and his family left Huntsville in 1901 in two covered wagons and moved to McDonald County, Missouri.  He didn't return until sixty some years later when one of his daughters and her family drove him there - in a car!  (The wagons took the better part of three days with two nights of camping under the stars.)  When Granddad returned after six decades of absence, he was able to locate his old one-room schoolhouse, which by that time was being used to store hay, and he found one of his boyhood friends and spent quite a bit of time catching up with him.

I drove my mother to the Huntsville area in the 1980's, and we spent several hours walking through cemeteries looking for our ancestors - but somehow I don't think we ever drove into the actual town.

Huntsville, Arkansas, of Madison County, was founded in the 1830's by a group of pioneers who moved to the area from Huntsville, of Madison County, Alabama.  One of the neighboring communities today is a speck just off of the main road called "Alabam."  Huntsville, Alabama, is today a key player in the aerospace industry, and Huntsville, Arkansas, has a "Butterball" turkey processing plant.

My primary reason for visiting Huntsville, Arkansas, was to check out the Madison County Genealogical and Historical Society's library - which I was able to do this morning.    I was impressed with their extensive collection of materials, and the lady who manages the library was very courteous and helpful.  The library is only open from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. three days a week - Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday - and it is a little more than a three-hour drive from my home in West Plains, Missouri, so I had to plan my trip carefully.  

I drove over on Monday afternoon and stayed at what I believe to be the only motel in town, an older place - but freshly remodeled and reasonably priced - called the Madison Motel.  It had formerly been known as the Faubus Motel.   (For those who aren't history majors, or as old as me, Orval Faubus was the governor of Arkansas who, when school started in September of 1957, called in the National Guard to surround Central High School in Little Rock to prevent nine black students from enrolling.   President Eisenhower, however, one-upped Faubus by sending in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the "Little Rock Nine" into the building and to their classes!)

Orval Faubus was a native of Madison County, Arkansas, and is buried in the county.  The manager of the motel told me that she thought his family had owned the business at one time.

Visiting the library and doing the research was the easy part of the trip, but the journey itself involved a lot of high drama.  First of all I got off to a later start than I had planned and felt rushed.  Then ten miles out of West Plains I realized that I had forgotten my meds and the clothes that I planned to wear the next day, so I had to turn around and backtrack to the house.   Altogether, I lost about thirty minutes in that maneuver - so then I really felt rushed!

My sister, who lives forty miles from Huntsville in Rogers, Arkansas, drove over to join me for dinner.   It was about five-thirty in the evening and we could not find a restaurant that was open, so we ate at the local Sonic.  It was my treat - and as I was putting my billfold back in my pocket, I apparently dropped it onto the floor of her car - a fact that I did not discover until my sister was already back at her house.  I telephoned her and said that I would come over and get it, but she said that she would bring it back the next morning and have breakfast with me at what looked to be a nice restaurant (and was) which was only open for breakfast and lunch.  So she made her second trip to Huntsville in two days to bring the wallet back to its clumsy owner.

Incident number three occurred when I tried to leave town this afternoon.   For those who are not familiar with the area, Eureka Springs is called "Little Switzerland, and with good reason.  It has hills everywhere and all of the roads are up-and-down-curvy, making driving a real challenge - as well as finding one's way around the town - and Huntsville is almost as bad.  The roads wrap around the hills, and a "straight stretch" of road might be no more than a couple of dozen yards in length.   As I was leaving today I thought I was on the right highway, but there were no markings.  I drove a full five miles before finally seeing a sign that let me know I was heading the wrong way - so I went back to town and tried again.

The second effort at getting out of town was even worse than the first.  I wound up on the town square, which has a tricky pattern or entering and exiting, and I exited wrong but managed to get in a flowing lane of traffic and headed in what I thought was the right direction.  A minute to two later the policeman who pulled me over for exiting the square wrong, told me that I was again headed the wrong way.  He spent ten minutes examining my license and car paperwork, and undoubtedly "running" me to make sure that I wasn't some Missouri desperado like Jesse James, and then (very kindly) told me that he was just giving me a warning because I wasn't from around there and didn't have a grasp of their very tricky traffic patterns.

Then, God bless him, the nice policeman led me out of town and sent me on my way.   (And I drove like the parson's grandmother all the way back to West Plains - and kissed the driveway when I arrived at the house!)

So much for my late summer vacation!  (The good news was that I did dig up a few tidbits about a couple of very "great" grandparents that I will be incorporating into the "Ancestor Archives" - so the trip wasn't a total wash!)

But be it ever so humble, there's no place like home!