Rufus Hunter Patton who was born in 1849 in Tennessee and moved to Arkansas in 1860 with his family in an ox cart when he was 10, and came to live north of Huntington in the Pleasant Ridge community area. He remembers the area before Huntington was even a town. The ridge on which Huntington is now located was known as Negro Ridge. The old Fort Smith to Waldron road was here and there were several old families and businesses in the area. He mentions the farm of John Martindale who was the father of Mrs. J.C. Pettus of Witcherville. The farm was a stopping place for horse and mule drovers. At that time many horses and mules were driven from up north to the cotton country south of here. He mentions a blacksmith by the name of Powers and a man by the name of Pilley who owned a farm near where Dayton is now. At that time there was no revenue on Whiskey and some of the gentlemen listed above kept whiskey by the barrel, which was usually kept in the smoke house. It was sold at 75 cents to $1.00 per gallon. Most everyone kept some in their house. He doesn't remember ever seeing a drunk man in his boyhood days.
He remembers attending a small school in the area taught by the famed Albert Pike. The teachers were paid half in money and half in hogs, pigs and other "food stuffs" during those days. He also remembers the first postage stamps as tiny red stickers with a picture of George Washington on them. They were not very practical he says because they wouldn't stick to the envelopes! Many Letters were seen in those days with the inscription, "Postage Paid if Mr. Washington Sticks". Often stamps were just pinned to the letters.
Mr. Patton remembers the bad times too, like the Civil War and the effects it had on the area. Food was so scarce in Arkansas that many lived on nothing but corn meal mush, corn bread and wild greens. Salt was so scarce that his mother used to take up the dirt from the smoke house floor where salted meat had dripped. Sugar could seldom be bought and molasses was used for sweetening. A typical day during those times he said was as usual the whole family got up early and we did our chores as mother prepared breakfast.
However on one day after chores and breakfast in the afternoon, on Tuesday September 1, 1863, they heard gunfire, only three-quarters of a mile away, of what is now known as the Battle of Backbone Mountain. As soon as the firing has ceased, he and his brother ran to the scene and helped all they could in gathering up the dead and the wounded. It was 10 days before some of the wounded had any care, since it took that long for a doctor to arrive and doctor's were scarce back then. Later when General Cabell surrendered Fort Smith to the Union Army, his mother was forced to cook for the Yankee men. She was afraid they would take her, so he hid out in the woods in the daytime and would only come home at night to sleep. One day his mother and the rest of the family were going to Fort Smith in the wagon when some blue-uniformed soldiers rode up. He hid under some quilts in the back of wagon. They asked his mother where we were going, and she told them, to Fort Smith for some medicine. One of the soldiers said "and you have a man hidden in the wagon?" "No" said his mother, "That's my sick little boy". "Damn long legs for a little boy" the soldier remarked, "but take him on the Doctor".
Shortly after this incident Mr. Patton remembers the government offered free transportation to Cairo, Illinois and the family left on a steamboat. However they returned soon, back to their Arkansas farm, only to find it almost completely destroyed. After Lee's surrender in 1865, we began all over again.
Those days after the war were some of the happier ones he says, but they were saddened by President Lincoln's assassination. The whole nation went into mourning. My mother had a beautiful black shawl and I remember her draping it on the front porch of our home in memory of the president. It was all she had in which to pay our respects.
(courtesy the South Sebastian Historical Society's "Key Magazine," 1966 & 1973)
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