. *CEMETERY OVERVIEW

www.arkansaspreservation.com

Northeast of the Trinity Lane and Montgomery Trace Intersection

c.1854-1870 cemetery from the former Petit Jean Mountain Community.
Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 04/04/2018

Summary

The Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, with local significance, as one of the last surviving sites associated with the historic community of Petit Jean Mountain, Arkansas.This site is also being nominated under Criteria Consideration D as a cemetery.

Elaboration

Petit Jean Mountain Community

The prominence known as Petit Jean Mountain is located along the south bank of the Arkansas River in southwest Conway County, Arkansas.When discovered by European explorers and settlers around the turn of the 19th century, the relatively flat top of the mountain included a creek and a rich layer of topsoil suitable for farming.The Native Americans of the area had been active around Petit Jean Mountain for thousands of years before European settlement as evidenced by nearly a hundred documented archaeological sites and Arkansas’s largest concentration of Native American rock art across the mountain’s rocky terrain.[1]The archeological and artistic evidence of early habitation on and around Petit Jean Mountain also suggests that Native Americans were farming in the area long before modern European settlers arrived in the area in c. 1800.

Petit Jean Mountain has been noted as a landmark by various early explorers and surveyors such as Thomas Nuttall and Henry Downs.[2]According to Dr. T. W. Hardison, a longtime resident of the mountain and a local physician, local legends relate that the first European-American to settle on the mountain was a man named Jean La Caze, who had fled France in the late 1700s with his family, including his son Petit Jean.La Caze was said to have died on the mountain in 1820.Another more romantic source for the name of Petit Jean Mountain was the story of a young French girl who stowed away and dressed as a young boy called Petit Jean to follow her love, a young French nobleman, on his expedition to explore the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.Her disguise was successful until she fell gravely ill near the site of Petit Jean Mountain.Despite the group’s best efforts, the young girl died and she was buried on top of the nearby mountain which they named after her nickname “Petit Jean” or “Little John”.[3]This name may also be a corruption of an early term for the Petit Jean River, “Petit Jaune” which meant “Little Yellow”.[4]

Early settlers also used the land on Petit Jean Mountain to graze cattle as well as start small farmsteads.[5]According to local histories of the mountain’s community, roads to the top of the mountain were first constructed in the late 1850s, allowing for arriving settlers to more easily access the rich soils along the upper parts of the mountain.[6] However, by the beginning of the Civil War there were only five known families living on Petit Jean Mountain.[7]

The Walker Family

The first residents on Petit Jean Mountain, John Walker and his family, are only documented in local histories and oral histories.John Walker is thought to have brought his family from Tennessee and started a small farmstead near the center of the mountain sometime before 1850.[8]He and his family built a log cabin north of what is now Lake Bailey and in c. 1854 two of his young daughters died and were buried on the mountain.These two burials would become the first burials in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.In an interview in 1983, Pat Hamilton (1890-1983), who grew up on Petit Jean Mountain and learned many of the stories of the early settlers from his mother and maternal grandmother, discussed the surviving settler cabin:

Yes, it was occupied by Owen West and his family and it stood down there right somewhere about where the middle of where the lake is now.And was built, it was built about 1851 or 1852… Built by a man by the name of Walker. And he built the cabin and floored it with punchings… And he was there in the house two or three or maybe four years and typhoid fever got into the family.Back then they called it slow fever.And two of his children died and when they died, one and then the other one in a few days, he took them up on the hill where the cemetery is now.He buried one and in a few days buried the other one, and he got disgusted and moved away and Owen West and his family moved in the house.[9]

The West Family

In the 1850s, after the Walker family moved away from the area, Owen West and his family occupied the Walker cabin as they began their own farmstead on the mountain.The West family most likely consisted of Owen West, his wife Jane West and their first five children.The West family would have three more children on the mountain; twins Elijah and Elisha (b. 1858) and Ephraim (b. 1860).[10]Most of the West children continued to live on Petit Jean Mountain.Koenig noted in his review of the history and genealogy of the mountain community that the children of early settlers tended to stay in the area while the third generation tended to move off the mountain for more opportunities.[11]Also according to Koenig, the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery contained 64 identifiable graves associated with the West family and their descendants.There may also be several more grave sites associated with this family in the unmarked graves throughout the cemetery.[12]The original grave stones for Owen and Jane West and their six sons buried in the cemetery have been replaced with modern markers by West family descendants.The cabin occupied by the Walker family and then the West family was moved and restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s during the development of Petit Jean State Park.The cabin is now located at the Cedar Creek Trailhead in Petit Jean State Park.

The Webber Family

Another early settler family was that of Roderick Webber.He and his family arrived on the mountain in the mid-1850s.Roderick Webber had married Marta H. Stout, who may have been a relative of Rev. W. C. Stout who owned Hawkstone Plantation at the base of Petit Jean Mountain.[13]Webber was apparently a tanner and used springs on the mountain to start a tanning business.These tanning pits are still visible near Tanyard Springs on Petit Jean Mountain.[14]By the 1860s, the Webbers had moved off the mountain to the current site of Oppelo in Conway County.

The Johnson and Montgomery Families

The Johnson family was also an early settler on the mountain.Amos and his wife “Clarkie” Johnson arrived on the mountain in the decade before the Civil War.Amos Johnson had met and married widow Clarissa “Clarkie” Clark Barnett in 1832 in Wilkinson County, Georgia.[15]The family histories of the Johnson and Montgomery families of Petit Jean Mountain are presented in Above the Hills of Time:Montgomery Family History of Bettye Montgomery Henderson, a self-published book from 2015 that was compiled by the descendants of the Montgomery family and various other intermarried families that lived on Petit Jean Mountain.According to Above the Hills of Time, Amos and Clarkie Johnson moved with their family from Georgia to Arkansas in 1858, eventually arriving on Petit Jean Mountain in late 1859 or early 1860.[16]Clarkie Johnson had four children from a previous marriage, who all grew up and settled with their families in Georgia.Clarkie would then have three children with Amos Johnson during her second marriage.After these children were grown and married, the entire family travelled to Arkansas to settle.This included Amos and Clarkie Johnson’s oldest child Nance and her husband Theodore Montgomery and their three children as well as Amos “Columbus” who was single and William G. L. Johnson and his family.It is also possible that they migrated with a number of slaves, as Theodore Montgomery is noted in 1860 as owning one 17 year old male.[17]

The family travelled by ox drawn wagons, travelling all fall to Greenville, Mississippi, where they then travelled by steamboat up the Mississippi and Arkansas River to Little Rock.[18]They worked for a time near Little Rock as farm laborers and then spent the winter near the area that would later become Maumelle, Arkansas.Family histories recount that during their time northwest of Little Rock, a group of men drove cattle through the area and Amos Johnson was very impressed with the condition and size of the cattle and asked where they were raised.He was told about Petit Jean Mountain and decided that was where he and his family needed to settle.They soon travelled to Perryville and then across the Fourche River and through Sharp’s Gap to Petit Jean Mountain, arriving on Petit Jean Mountain at some point near early 1860.

Amos Johnson passed away soon after the family’s arrival and was the third known burial in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery in 1860 (grave #264).He died after sustaining injuries when a tree fell on him while he was clearing land.[19]Amos is also remembered in family histories as leading the first church services on Petit Jean Mountain in the summer of 1860.Amos’s wife Clarissa “Clarkie” Johnson was also buried in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery in 1878 (grave #265).

William G.L. Johnson married Emily Knowles while they still lived in Georgia.The couple had one child who died in Georgia.They had another five children on Petit Jean, at least three of whom were buried in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.After her husband died in c. 1871, Emily married James D. “Jimmack” McMahan.Both are buried in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery (graves #0186 and #0185).[20]Jimmack McMahan was a justice of the peace and a deputy sheriff and his bio appears in the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas of 1891:

James D. McMahan, a planter living on Petit Jean Mountain, in Cedar Falls Township, was born in Tennessee, October 10, 1836. He is the son of William and Charlotte (Porter) McMahan. Parents were natives of Tennessee, where they were married about 1833. The result of this union was eight children, four sons and four daughters. Four children are now living, of whom James D., the subject of this sketch, is the oldest. …Our subject was reared on the farm; attended the common schools. He came from Tennessee to Arkansas, settling in Conway County, where he was married on December 5, 1874, to Mrs. Emily E. Johnson, a daughter of Joseph E. and Mary Knowles. Her father was a native of North Carolina, born in 1817, and mother of Georgia, born in 1811. …Mrs. McMahan was married to her former husband, William G. Johnson, in 1857. They were the parents of seven children, four now living. Mr. Johnson died in 1871, and was a member of the Baptist Church. Our subject, Mr. McMahan, now owns a good farm of eighty acres, well improved and stocked. He takes an active interest in the development of his locality. He served as Justice of his township in 1879 and was a Deputy Sheriff from 1886 to 1887. Politically he is a member of the Republican party. Mrs. McMahan is a member of the Baptist Church.[21]

Jimmack McMahan died in 1914 and Emily Knowles Johnson McMahan died three years later in 1917 and both were buried in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery (graves #186 and #185).

The sons of Amos and Clarkie Johnson, William G. L. and Amos “Columbus”, and son-in-law Theodore Montgomery all enlisted in Confederate units in 1862. [22] It appears from the sources available that all three only served a short time before leaving to return to their families on Petit Jean Mountain by the end of 1862.Amos “Columbus” and William both may have been wounded in battle while Theodore fought at the Battle of Prairie Grove before returning home.

Nancy Johnson married Theodore Montgomery while the Johnson family was still living in Georgia.[23]The couple would have three children before moving to Arkansas.After Theodore’s service in the Civil War, the couple would have six more children including a set of twins.Nancy Montgomery died in 1909 and was buried in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery (grave #208) near her husband Theodore who had passed away in 1883 (grave #209).The land that Nancy and Theodore Montgomery homesteaded on Petit Jean Mountain is now part of Winrock Farms.

The nine children of Theodore and Nancy Montgomery included William (grave #210), Robert, Sophronia Sarah “Sally” (grave #172, husband Tom Pynson grave #173), Amos C., Andrew, Theodore who died as an infant and was most likely buried in a grave marked with a fieldstone, John Manley (grave #250, wife Margaret Alice grave #204), and Josephine (grave #171, husband William H. Coble grave #870).Six of the Montgomery children survived to adulthood, married and raised families on Petit Jean Mountain.Also, John Manley and his wife Margaret Alice had a little store in the early 1900s that was north of the cemetery. One of the stones on his grave is the hearthstone from his pioneer parents' log home.[24]

Amos “Columbus” Johnson married Martha Huggins, daughter of Robert Huggins, after he returned to the mountain after the Civil War.The Huggins family were also early settlers on Petit Jean Mountain.The couple had two children, Lillian and Alison.Amos “Columbus” Johnson died of pneumonia shortly after his brother William in 1870.[25]Amos “Columbus” was buried next to his brother in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery (grave #260).After the death of her husband, Martha Huggins remarried in 1870 to Drury McNairy “Mack” Allen or nearby Higgins Township. [26] Sadly, Martha passed away during the birth of their second child in 1876.She may have been buried in an unmarked graved in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.

The Morris Family

The Morris family, headed by Joseph Morris, is recorded on Petit Jean Mountain as an early settler family, moving to the area soon after the West family.In Above the Hills of Time:Montgomery Family History of Bettye Montgomery Henderson it is recorded that the Morris family had a daughter named Harriet (grave #321) who was the first white child born on Petit Jean Mountain.[27]A Morris son, John Morris, married Nancy Carlock and farmed on Petit Jean through the late 19th century.[28]Also, two of the sons of Owen West married two of the daughters of Joseph Morris.[29]

Daniel P. Scott

Daniel Prather Scott moved to Petit Jean Mountain after the end of the Civil War and was on the mountain before 1878.[30]He is thought to have moved to Arkansas from either Illinois or Missouri.He was known to the other settlers on the mountain as unlikely to socialize with the rest of the community.He taught school from his small two-room cabin across from the surviving Trinity Lutheran Church from 1878 until his death in the late 1880s.He is buried in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery (grave #526).It is recorded in Koenig’s history of the Petit Jean Mountain community that Julius Rebstock, a local stone mason, carved his oval headstone.The Rebstock family were members of the German Lutheran community that moved to the mountain in the 1880s and were among those that helped to build Trinity Lutheran Church.[31]

The Huggins and Haggerty Families

Robert Huggins held the oldest recorded land patent on Petit Jean Mountain from 1861.He and his family is recorded in the 1860 Census as living near the Owen West and Joseph Morris families and near the home of Penelope Haggerty.Joab and Penelope Haggerty were some of the earliest known settlers in the area of Petit Jean Mountain, having both moved independently to Arkansas Post where they possibly met and married in 1815.[32]They settled at the base of Petit Jean Mountain sometime during the 1820s and are recorded in the local Census in 1840.Their cabin was apparently located on the land now known as “Haggerty Point” which is now the location for the dining area of the Winthrop Rockefeller homestead.[33]Joab possibly died early, but Penelope Haggerty lived to a great age and was known on the mountain as “widow Haggerty.”A Haggerty daughter, Nancy, was born in 1812 in Missouri, possibly from an earlier marriage of Joab’s.Nancy married Robert Huggins in North Carolina in 1834 and then moved to Alabama before 1842.Sometime in the 1850s, Nancy and her husband Robert Huggins and their two youngest children moved to live near Penelope Haggerty on Petit Jean Mountain.Also, Mrs. Haggerty would regularly visit the Johnson family.She would ride her horse from her farm between the mountain and the river and stay two or three days.[34] Nancy and Robert’s youngest child, Martha, would eventually marry Amos “Columbus” Johnson, son of Amos and Clarkie Johnson.Although there are no marked graves in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery for the Huggins and Haggerty family, there are most likely unmarked graves associated with these families.

The Carlock Family

William and his wife Mary A. Carlock arrived on Petit Jean Mountain sometime before 1870.

Rev. William H. Carlock, an old and highly respected citizen, living on Petit Jean Mountain, in Cedar Falls Township, was born in Tennessee July 14, 1827; he is a son of James and Martha (Burgess) Carlock; his parents both native of Tennessee… Mr. Carlock, the subject, was reared on the farm, and was married November 1, 1844, to Miss Mary A. Hamilton, and there were born to that union ten children, five sons and five daughters, five of whom are now living, and are named John W., James W., Martha J., Margaret E., Rhoda A.. Mr. Carlock’s wife died in 1863; she was a long time member of the M. E. Church…Our subject enlisted in the late war in 1861, in Company I, Thirty-Sixth Tennessee Regiment Infantry; was discharged in 1862 on account of old age.He served as Justice of the Peace for some time in the district of the county in which he resided.In 1869 he emigrated from Tennessee to Arkansas, and settled in Yell County, where he lived until 1879 when he moved to Conway County, where he now resided.Mr. Carlock owns a fine farm of 240 acres, with 60 acres under cultivation.[35]

One of William and Mary Carlock’s daughters, Rhoda “Rodie” Carlock, would eventually marry one of Owen West’s sons, William Wiley West.William and Mary Carlock’s son, James Walker Carlock, purchased the old Walker-West Cabin, now displayed at Petit Jean State Park, from the West family in c. 1879. [36] The West family had constructed a larger home for their family and had abandoned the earlier cabin during the late 1870s.James Walker Carlock moved the cabin from its original location to a site on the south side of Lake Bailey.James Carlock, who was usually referred to as Walker, would later file a homestead patent on land south of Lake Bailey in 1888.

James W. Carlock, one of the representative citizens of Cedar Falls Township, on the Petit Jean Mountain, is a native of Walker County, Georgia, and was born August 17, 1855. He is a son of William H. and Mary A. Carlock,…Our subject was married in Yell County, Arkansas, October 8, 1876, to Miss Corona C. Hamilton, a daughter of Benjamin and Nancy (Crouch) Hamilton, Mrs. Carlock was born in Georgia October 9, 1852; she died December 5, 1878, and left one son, William B. (Benjamin). Mr. Carlock was married the second time March 9, 1879, to Miss Ann J. Bernard, a daughter of Marcus and Sarah L. (Paplin) Bernard; father was a native of France, and mother of Mississippi; they were married in Pope County, Arkansas, about 1842, and were the parents of four children, named Ann J., wife of subject, born in Yell County, October 7, 1852; Samuel; Matilda, wife of James Jones, and William M. Father died October 20, 1855; mother died in 1888, and both were members of the M. E. Church.Mr. Carlock owns one of the best places on the mountain, 115 acres well improved; he and Mrs. Carlock are members of the M. E. Church, South; they are parents of five children, named in order of birth; Joseph, W., Mary L., Alfred R., Matilda A. and Jessie L.[37]

The Carlock family lived in the structure that would become known as the “Pioneer Cabin” for over 50 years, adding additions to the cabin over time. [38] Eventually, after the Carlock family had vacated the cabin, the family sold the land and donated the cabin to Petit Jean State Park.The cabin was then “restored” by removing several additions and then moved in the 1930s to its present location at Cedar Creek trailhead.Many members of the Carlock family are buried in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery, although few had engraved markers.Many of their descendants are also buried there.

The Bratcher Family

In 1881 the Bratcher family moved to Petit Jean from Tennessee. From the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas, Goodspeed Publishers, 1891:

John B. Bratcher, a planter living on Petit Jean Mountain, was born in Tennessee August 19, 1838, a son of Charles and Elizabeth (King) Bratcher. His parents were natives of Tennessee, where they were married… His father emigrated from Tennessee to Arkansas and died in Ouachita County; mother returned to Tennessee, where she is still living, and a member of the M. E. Church, South.Our subject was married in Ray [Rhea] County, Tennessee, in 1867, to Miss Nancy Reed [Reese], a native of Tennessee, born in 1836. They are the parents of five children, three sons and two daughters, named John W., General, Charles, Amanda E., and Cora A.Our subject owns 160 acres of good land, with forty acres under cultivation. He enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861, in Company E, 19th Tennessee Infantry, and served until 1863; was wounded in the battle of Chickamauga and was then discharged, when he returned home and engaged in farming.He immigrated to Arkansas in 1881 and settled in Conway County; here he has become identified with the interests of his county, and politically he votes with the Democratic party.[39]

It is thought that John and Nancy Bratcher were buried in the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery although their graves were probably marked only with fieldstones.Their son, Charles, and his wife, Maggie Lee, are also both buried in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery (graves #760 and #761).

The Monday Family

Also in 1881, the Monday family and their ward, Margaret Alice Ferguson, moved to Petit Jean with the Bratcher family.James Monday (grave #129) was the son of Nancy Bratcher from a previous marriage.He and his wife, Elvira Ferguson Monday (grave #131) raised Elvira's niece, Margaret Alice Ferguson (grave #204) who later married John Manley Montgomery.The Fergusons were a fairly prominent family in Rhea County, Tennessee.Elvira's brother, Enoch D. Ferguson was one of the few survivors of the 1874 expedition into Yellowstone National Park.[40]He went on to become very prominent in Bozeman, Montana.Margaret Alice's father, Milam, went to Montana after his wife died, taking the older children with him but leaving the youngest, Margaret Alice, with her aunt.In 1893, Milam earned a Gold Medal at the Chicago World's Fair for his Barley.[41]

The Webb Family

Meredith Windreth Webb, who was born in 1833 in Alabama, married Ann Moon and fathered William Robert “W. R.” Webb (1868 – 1953) who was elected to the Arkansas Legislature in 1922.W. R. Webb would only serve one term, from 1923 to 1924 in the Arkansas House of Representatives.However, this year would see the establishment of Petit Jean State Park as the first state park in Arkansas.Meredith Webb and his wife Ann Webb are both buried in Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.In a Morrilton Headlight article of September 23, 1949, W. R. Webb recalled crossing the ice over the Arkansas River in the winter of 1886.[42]Also “As far back as 1909, Mr. Webb helped in the development of the Nelson place, which was among the first improvements on Petit Jean…. The late Mrs. Webb, his wife, was former postmistress at West on Petit Jean until Mr. Webb circulated a petition to create a rural mail route from Morrilton.”[43]

Petit Jean State Park was Arkansas’s first State Park, created from local lumber company land holding on Petit Jean Mountain in 1923.Although originally proponents of Petit Jean Mountain had wanted the area to become a National Park, this idea was shot down in 1921 when Stephen Mather, director of the National Park Service, decided the area was just too small to become a National Park.[44]After this set-back, Thomas William Hardison and officials of the Fort Smith Lumber Company approached the Arkansas state legislature with the idea of creating the state’s first state park.In 1923, House Bill 873, sponsored by the Honorable W. B. Webb, was introduced to the Arkansas legislature and directed the Commissioner of State Lands to accept the lands donated by the Fort Smith Lumber Company for the purpose of creating the Petit Jean Mountain State Park.[45]This bill was introduced in the house on February 21, 1923 and was recorded as passed on March 1st, becoming Act 276 of 1923.After his term in the legislature, W. R. Webb and his family eventually returned to Conway County and lived in the community of Jerusalem in northwest Conway County.

Later History

The Petit Jean Mountain community remained small until a newly established railroad line between Little Rock and Fort Smith offered better access to the area in the late 19th century.[46]The mountain was soon promoted by local boosters as a recreational area and the mountain’s first resort hotel was constructed in 1889.Most of the early community members were farmers and quite a few were carpenters.Also, some ran small stores in the area.Agricultural related business were started on the mountain including a cotton gin that was started by Will Avants (grave #425) and Dan Rice (grave #430).The local community had a subscription school and there were two post offices located on Petit Jean Mountain, one near the cemetery named “West.”[47]A second post office, named “Index”, was located near the spot where the modern Highway 154 meets Winrock Drive.[48]

In the 1880s, a German-American Lutheran colony named Wittenberg was started on Petit Jean Mountain and the Trinity Lutheran Church and Cemetery (NR listed 12.13.1976) was built on land adjacent to the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.[49]This colony led to a sharp increase in population on the mountain by 1900.The settlers on Petit Jean Mountain successfully created small farms and orchards that flourished for several decades.However, by the late 1920s, a cotton price crash, droughts, insect infestations, and poor soil management led to the depopulation of the area.Also, the following Great Depression and World War II escalated this depopulation.Soon, the area was mostly used for recreation rather than farming.Winthrop Rockefeller, a wealthy New Yorker, came to the mountain and built Winrock Farms, a showplace for cattle operation.

The Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery has continued to be used by the local community from its creation with the two burials in 1854 to today.The cemetery has always been a communal burial ground, with no formal oversight until recent decades.Lots were never sold for new burials, open spaces were just appropriated as needed by local community members.[50]The cemetery has been restored once, by the local Petit Jean Home Demonstration Club in the 1940s.This restoration’s main addition to the cemetery was to build a fence around both the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery and the adjacent Lutheran Cemetery.Two separate surveys of graves have been conducted at this cemetery, including one in 1997 and a second in 2008.[51] Patrick Henry Hamilton (1890-1983, grave #832) loved the history of the mountain and those who settled on it.They were his family and his friends.He loved and maintained the cemetery for many years.Pat had inherited property that adjoined the cemetery on the east side. When it appeared that the community cemetery needed more space, he laid out three sections of plots, surveyed them, and sold the deeds for only the cost of the recording fee.These sections are now part of the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery.

Contributed on 4/19/18 by hawkinsdonna48
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