The publishers of The Eagle Democrat have chosen to publish articles from the past Oldtimer’s Notebook in memory of Robert L. Newton. This article was first published August 29, 2001.
Football’s upon us again, despite the heat and other concomitant crudities of the period. Arkansas engages that bunch of outlaws from Las Vegas Thursday night; Friday night the Lumberjacks adjourn into mosquito country to engage the Stuttgart Ricebirds.
This column is not dedicated to pigskin prognostication but we’d think, really, the Lumberjacks have a better chance of winning than do the Hogs: that bunch from Nevada is tough, as we learned last December.
Best chance of a win: the hermitage Hermits, against the junior varsity from Crossett, on Saturday.
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In antiquity, there was a big old wooden house on the old Camden Road on a site now occupied by a brick home owned by our old friends and WHS classmates, Wayburn and Martha McKinney Bolland.
This old house was once rented to the Doster family, from which sprang that marvelous lady, the late Frankie Doster Neely, Bradley County’s first licensed LPN and the mother of fine women of the city like Vadna Roberts and Mildred Brazeel.
Later, it was the residence of my grandfather’s brother, William Craig Hunter, who, I think, had the same kind of wood-haulin’ and sellin’ contract with the Southern Lumber Company as that enjoyed by Peter Earl Garrison, once mayor of Warren (grandfather too of the rising and popular Texas Congressman, Chet Edwards).
Messrs. Garrison and Hunter had little wagons pulled by mules which’d deliver “hardwood shorts” to your house upon order.
Don’t I recall the late Frank Riley, grandfather of Attorney Richard Lamar Roper of the city, going around and taking orders for Mr. Garrison in the Bradley planning mill?
Memory seems to dredge up the fact that funds for the wood would be withdrawn from your paycheck at Bradley: Mr. Garrison would thus be remunerated.
Nice for Mr. Garrison.
Well, at any rate, W.C. Hunter and his wife, Sallie Askins Hunter, had a huge houseful of boys (they all were special friends of a special friend of ours, the retired school official Nelson Thompson).
The hunters named the boys regular names: but they named the daughter “Bathsheba”, afer King David’s girlfriend/wife.
Family later called her just “Bash”, a whole lot better than “Bathsheba”.
Back to that old house: this was the residence of Judge Josiah Gould, prominent in early Bradley County history.
(The late author of Reflections took a bunch of seventh graders, once, west of town and, out in the middle of the woods, they discovered the long-abandoned cemetery of the Gould family).
Another one with Bradley County beginnings is Mrs. Jann Williams Woodard, Benton, an amateur but much-praised historian who pores over the ancient files of the lamented “Arkansas Gazette”.
Mrs. Williams is a granddaughter of the late Roy O’Neals.
Mr. O’Neal used to drive the school bus upon which the “Warren Lumberjack Band” would retire to centers of refinement like Hot Springs, El Dorado, and Jackson, Miss. To “band contests”.
Are the rural scribe, George Morgan, and Buddy McCaskill the survivors of that group who suffered under the harsh discipline of Ralph Philip Dial, the band director? (us and Oscar Koehler, Jr., come to think of it: yes, and Col. Robert Clayton Moseley, USAF-Ret. Of San Antonio).
Well, the goodly Jan Williams has dug up some interesting obituary info about Judge Gould, which she supplies.
This is the exact obituary of Judge Gould published on page one, column one, of THE ARKANSAS GAZETTE December 19, 1872, during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant as president of the United States:
“Little Rock – Hon. Josiah Gould, an old and much-respected citizen of this state, died recently at his residence in Bradley County. Mr. Gold came to this city in 1836, we believe as chief clerk in the office of the United States Surveyor General, during the incumbency of Hon. Edward Cross. He afterwards entered upon the successful practice of law, and continued until his removal hence to the southeast near Warren about the year 1844-45. He filled the position of circuit judge and state senator for one or more terms each, with honor to himself and benefit to the state. The best published Digest of the laws of the state was his work, and it is a coincidence worthy of remark, that the date of his death and that of Judge Watkins, appointed to examine and approve the Digest before its publication, were so nearly parallel in time. Judge Gould was a man of seeming austerity but really of kindly heart. He was a good man and useful citizen in his day, and leaves behind him a reputation which is a proud legacy for his children. His wife survives him, we believe. How rapidly the old and honored men of Arkansas are passing away, to the great loss of the state. It is sad to have to confess that those who succeed them are of a stamp inferior. God help us if the deterioration shall long continue.”
