Recollections of a Young Man in Conway
By The Rev. Elijah Leroy Shettles

Editor's Note: Recollections of a Long Life by Rev. E. J. Shettles (1852-1940) first appeared in 1935-36 as a series of articles in the Pontotoc Progress, a weekly newspaper in Pontotoc, Mississippi. The recollections were later published in 1973 by Blue & Gray Press, Inc., of Nashville, Tennessee. During his eventful life, Shettles was a farmer, teacher, secretary for the Grange, law student, pressman for a newspaper, freight agent, public weigher, coal supplier, gambler, saloon keeper, insurance solicitor, preacher, church administrator, magazine editor, book collector and dealer, and finally, representative for several university and public libraries. As a young man in his twenties and thirties he fought a losing struggle against his personal "demons" - drinking and gambling. In the first part of his autobiography, Rev. Shettles tells of his life in Mississippi and Arkansas before he went to Texas, became a Christian, and began a 30-year (1891-1921) career in the Methodist ministry. For six years, from 1875 to 1881, the young man (age 23 to 29) lived and worked in the Conway area, although he also spent some time in Texas and St. Louis. The "recollections" printed below cover the period when Shettles considered himself an "Arkansas Traveller." The information in brackets [ ] and footnotes have been supplied by the editor, who has also corrected the spelling of some names.
 
[On page 66 of his book, Shettles tells of his first teaching job in his home community of Fredonia, Mississippi. At that time he was 22 years old.] The school house at Fredonia, a frame building, had a large heating stove, so they could maintain a school in the winter. In the early part of 1875 I was asked to teach a school there which had both free and pay scholars during the spring and summer, a term of about eight months. I accepted and began in January with a large number of scholars, and a good prospect. But I came very nearly losing my place through a drunken, dancing debauch carried on in one of the homes in the neighborhood. The trustees had me before them and after giving apologies and explanations, and a promise that I would not behave in such a manner again, they decided to let me continue. I was on my good behavior from then till the end of the term. ...
 
After the close of my school, about the middle of August, I was in rather poor health, and, consulting with my father and mother, decided to go to Arkansas to visit two of my uncles who had moved out there the year before. After getting my belongings together, which consisted of a little paper-covered trunk, a fiddle, a brass horn, and a change or two of clothing, I left home on August 29, 1875. ...
 
[Two days later, Shettles arrived in Little Rock on the train from Memphis.]
 
The next morning the porter called me promptly on time and delivered me to a transfer man, who took me up town for breakfast, and then across the Arkansas River to Argenta, (1) where I boarded a train on the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad for my destination, Atkins. On this train I met Mr. Jessie Martin, a merchant in Conway, who, I believe, at the time was a member of the legislature. (2) Conway, located just two miles south of the foothills of the Ozarks, was the county seat of a newly-created county which had been named Faulkner for the celebrated Colonel Sandy Faulkner of "Arkansas Traveller" fame. I knew that my father had a number of relatives living near Greenbrier which was in this county. On inquiry I learned that Mr. Martin knew where they lived and on his solicitation I concluded to stop off and visit these people first.
 
A "Rocky" Trip
Mr. Martin soon found a man from their community was in town and agreed to take me out to visit my father's uncle, Burl Nixon. (3) The man was named Julian and I have never forgotten him or the trip out across the Cadron [the East Cadron Creek]. When Mr. Julian was ready to go, we climbed into his old wagon which was pulled by a pair of unruly oxen and was so loose all over that I wondered if it would hold together. After passing through the "gap" north of town, (4) I began to see rocks, and they are there yet. I had never up to that time, have never since had such a shaking up as I received on that seven mile trip. By the time I arrived at my Uncle's home I was not sure whether there was a whole bone in my body. I have never suffered from any sort of liver complaint, which is probably due to that ride.
 
There I found a neighborhood full of kinfolks, none of whom I had ever seen before. After I had visited around for a week, a cousin decided that he would take me on horseback up into the mountains of Conway County, where W. H. and J. H. Browning, the two uncles lived, whom I had first started to visit. Leaving their location I went back after a few days to the neighborhood of my kinfolks in Faulkner County, got my little trunk and boarded the train for Atkins where I found some one to take me twenty miles out in the mountains to continue my visit with my uncles. In those mountains I found plenty of big rocks and had great sport in starting boulders to rolling down the mountain sides, tearing away brush, trees and other rocks on their way.
 
My uncles lived in a beautiful little valley, nestled between the Ozark Mountains. The topography of the locality was all new to me, but the little valley had furnished them with enough tillable land to make a good crop, the mountain streams furnished them plenty of fishing, and the mountains furnished them with wild game of which they were very fond. I helped them to gather part of their crops and after the first bale of cotton had been picked, I went with my uncle to Lewisburg, (5) about thirty miles away, to market it. We soon marketed our bale of cotton, bought such things as were needed by the families, supplied ourselves with the "little brown jug," and then went back to our mountain home.
 
I helped them to gather more of their crop and went out with them on a trip to nearby counties in search of a better location to settle, which ended in the neighborhood of Conway at the settlement of the kinfolks whom I had first visited.
 
My uncles were so well pleased with what they saw there that they returned to the Conway County homes and moved into Faulkner County. I did not return with them but remained to help the farmers to gather their crops and make their sorghum, thus getting together enough money to go back to Mississippi. After having a few spells of home-sickness, I took my departure, about the middle of November for old Mississippi, where I arrived after an absence of two months and a half and found that I had not been gone long enough to be missed. I had gathered up a lot of experience, however, and had much to talk and tell about, but before long I was beginning to wish I was back in Arkansas, where I thought I would have a better opportunity to accomplish something. ...
 
[Shettles went from Mississippi to St. Louis and then to east Texas, where he had interesting adventures but was unsuccessful as a salesman of the Oliver chilled plow. He returned to Mississippi in 1877.]
 
I had not been home long before I made a trade with my good old Grandfather Shettles to make a crop for him at fifteen dollars a month, that is, to do the plowing. I plowed old Bawly, the first horse that I had plowed and the last one. I worked hard from the first of April until August. While I was making the crop in the summer I did a great deal of thinking and reflecting over my past mistakes. When I finished my work for Grandfather, I went home to Fredonia, and, as soon as I could arrange matters, packed up and my father carried me to Oxford where I bought a ticket to Conway, Arkansas, on August 11, 1877, bidding good-bye for all time to the Flatwoods and Mississippi so far as living there was concerned. (6)
 
I had but little money when I arrived in Conway, but if it came to the worst, I knew that I could earn two dollars per day picking cotton. After staying around the town for a few days, I got a job with a bridge gang on the railroad and started to work at a very good wage, but it did not take me long to find out that the work was too heavy for me. At the end of the week I got my time, carried it to Ed [Edwin C.] Dunlap's saloon to cash it, but Dunlap made me buy a dollar's worth of his mean, cheap whiskey at a high price, and also got my other six dollars. (7) After this experience I went to the country and began to do what I knew I could do. I had been working for more than a month, when to my surprise, my friend, Mr. Dalton of St. Louis, with whom I had kept up a correspondence, asked me to come up and make another trial [at selling Oliver plows]. I had laid by money enough to make the trip and a friend took me across the country to Beebe, where I soon took the Iron Mountain train for St. Louis.
 
Failed in St. Louis
I went to work with determination to do my best for I truly wanted to make good, but I was and had been handicapped all along by my bad habits of drinking and gambling, and I was soon seeing St. Louis, which meant that I would "blow up." I had a fair trial, but before long I had to give up my place for I just could not do my work well and behave as I was. After about four weeks I told Mr. Dalton that if he would give me money to pay my board bill and my fare to Conway, Arkansas, I thought I would go back there, then I took a few drinks to celebrate my liberty, went out and got into a card game, and lost my last penny.
 
I woke up the next morning which was Sunday, without a cent and three hundred and fifty miles from Conway. I had just one string left in my bow. There was a stranger in the boarding house, with whom I had been talking during the week, and he told me that he was going on Sunday morning to Morrilton, which was just twenty miles from Conway. I truthfully related my whole story to this man, and asked him to let me have enough money to pay my way, which he did, and at ten o'clock that morning I was aboard the Iron Mountain train for Conway.

I arrived on Monday morning, November 1, 1877, without money and with no prospect, but I was determined to stay, and that day I began a real struggle to find a new place in the sun, or somewhere else equally as good. There was in the town a man named Dick [Richard H.] Waterman, who was a carpenter and a fiddler. I was a fiddler, but not a carpenter. I suppose that I must have worked my fiddle racket on Dick, who had a contract to build a new court house for Faulkner County, for he gave me a job which lasted through the winter. Dick Waterman could cuss louder, get mad quicker, get into a good humor again quicker, and fiddle as long as any man who could at that time boast of Arkansas as his home. Dick, as the world would say, was a hale fellow, well met, and like his grog. At that time he had more old, broken-down machinery, fewer good tools, built more houses at losing prices, and had a better fiddle than anyone I knew.
 
Opie Read
One of the first men whom I met after my return from St. Louis was Opie Read, who at that time with Harry Warner, conducted the town paper, the first Arkansas Traveller to be published in the State. As pressman I helped them get it out at times when I was not helping Dick Waterman. During this same winter Colonel [George W.] Bruce, a good lawyer, met with Read and myself at night, and went through Blackstone's common law with us. The Colonel was an ex- Confederate soldier and had come to Conway from Georgia. He lived and reared a family in Conway. He taught us much law that winter and spring. I devoted much time to his study and he thought that I could get my license in the fall.
 
Read and I had a good many things in common and soon became very "chummy." We were broke and in a strange country; we were both literary in turn of mind and liked to talk and rehearse our experiences; we were both waiting for something to turn up; and we both liked the bottle.
 
One evening we had gone for a walk down the railroad track. This was the winter following the great railroad strike in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that had left so many men without work and many of them began tramping. I am not sure, but following that strike was the beginning of the "Tramp." We had not gone far before meeting two of these tramps. We looked as if we were of the same fraternity, and one of us asked them, "Where are you going, boys?" Without hesitating or even looking up, one of them replied, "We are just leaving the place we are at." That reply made a lasting impression on me, so much so, that I never forgot it, and in after years, tried to profit by it. I have used the incident many times to illustrate an aimless life.
 
It was in Conway that Opie Read made his first effort at story writing. His first story was "John Boyd," which was never published in book form. This story was extensively and uniquely advertised before being published in the Conway Arkansas Traveller, and gave both Read and the paper quite a local boost. He distributed small posters with the name John Boyd on them throughout the county, and until they read the first chapter in the paper everyone was asking, "What is this John Boyd?" Some months later, Colonel Mitchell started a paper in Little Rock, known as the Evening Democrat, (8) and hired Read as city editor at a salary of twenty dollars a week. Read lost no time in accepting the offer and that ended his residence in Conway.
 
It was probably in 1879 that Harry Warner suspended the Arkansas Traveller of Conway and went to California. Some years later Opie Read and Philo Benham started the famous Arkansas Traveller in Little Rock. Following the suspension of the Arkansas Traveller in Conway, Abe Livingston established the Log Cabin, with Harry [or Henry] Condit as local editor.
 
I have met Opie Read many times since he left Conway and have watched his career with interest. Like so many bright men, he has been a victim of liquor and cards. ...
 
Teaching School 
By the spring of 1878 my jobs with Dick Waterman and the Arkansas Traveller had played out. I did not long remain idle for I was approached by John Townsend, a deputy sheriff, who lived about a mile and a half north of town near the [Cadron] Gap, and he asked if I would teach a school for them on the hill beyond the Gap. Being without work or money, and at the time preparing myself for an Arkansas judgeship under the tutorship of Colonel Bruce, I at once consented. It was to be a pay school, and Mr. Townsend was to get the farmers to send their children and pay me monthly. In a little while I was installed on the hill above town with about thirty-five children. (9) The curriculum called for a [Webster's] blue back spelling book, McGuffey's series of readers, and Ray's or Davies' Arithmetic. We had no grammar scholars, and if we had, I would not have known what to do with them. I boarded with Mr. Caldwell, a farmer near by, and spent the Saturdays and Sundays in town. I read law, taught the children how to spell and read, and was happy and I thought on my way to realize my ambition.
 
In the early spring of 1878, I saw my first telephone. It was an improvised affair, a cotton string with a box attached at either end of the line, and extended from the railroad depot to Frauenthal' s store, a distance of about three hundred feet. Its purpose was to verify the claim that the voice could be conveyed over a line, and it worked. Just ten years later I saw my first electric street car. It was being run as a demonstration car and the place was Kansas City.
 
During the spring or summer of 1878, while I was teaching school, the Methodists and Baptists united in a picnic excursion to Russellville, forty-five miles up the railroad from Conway. Although reared a Baptist, I was attending the Methodist church and Sunday School, probably because of interest in some young lady, and was elected by the two churches as Marshall of the day. When it was time to start, I was decked out with a long red sash that I had borrowed from Jim Mitchell (10) and led the host of big, little, old and young to the train. When we arrived at Russellville, I marched them through the streets to the picnic grounds. The sash was a part of Mr. Mitchell's Masonic regalia and he had cautioned me a number of times not to soil or tear it, but my impression is that I did both. I landed my picnic crowd, however, back in Conway late that evening, without any casualties.
 
A funny incident happened during this year which came near breaking up my church activities. The conference sent as pastor to the Methodist church an old man, whom some of us thought to be old in ideas as well as years. (11) A few of the younger set in the Methodist Sunday School, none of them belonging to the church, led by Mrs. Winton, had organized a choir, a sort of "high-falutin" affair. This new preacher, after he had observed our performance for a Sunday or two, rolled back onto a corner of the little wheezy voiced organ and "histed his own tunes," leaving us to find seats in the congregation or elsewhere. Most of us left.
 
Sometime in the early part of 1879 the Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad put on their first passenger train as an experiment, running up from Little Rock to Fort Smith on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, and returning the next day. Prior to this, for nine years the railroad had been running only mixed freight and passenger trains and the rolling stock had consisted of seven engines, together with box cars and passengers. ...The box cars were small and would hold about twenty bales of cotton.
 
When an engine was pulling eight or ten loaded cars, it was necessary to double over Cadron Gap hill. (12) When I boarded in the neighborhood of the Gap I used to watch for an opportunity to hop the train for a ride out. I always felt safe with a train of ten cars. The poorest engine of them all came along once with a ten car train. I wanted to go home and failed to notice that the cars were empty before I got in the caboose. The old engine had a full head of steam and started up the grade fast enough to pull all the cars over the hill. I realized that I would have to ride to the next station or else jump. When the train slowed down as much as it was going to, I swung off and like Brer Rabbit landed in a briar patch on the side of the track. The briars saved me from breaking an arm, leg or even my neck, but I had so many scratches that I had to absent myself from town for almost a week while they healed up.
 
Exciting Politics 
Politically speaking, the year of 1878 was an exciting one. Billy [W. J.] Harrell, the sheriff, ran for re-election, but he had strong opposition in Jack Witt, a very popular citizen. Ten days before the election Mr. Harrell died and his friends put John Townsend, his chief deputy, into the race. Both sides redoubled their energies and worked with all of their might until the polls were closed. John beat Jack, but like the old Negro's coon, he was "most powerfully scared." I know, for I was living in Mr. Townsend's home at that time. (13)
 
The day after the election I saw for the first time a man killed by another. Two of the candidates for one of the minor offices who had fallen out during the campaign met on a crowded street and one fired point blank at the other with a short pocket derringer. Although not more than ten paces away, he missed his man and killed a lawyer named Caldwell. I knew Caldwell, who was a fine young man, and I had boarded for several months at his father's home while teaching school. (14)
 
In the summer of 1878, New Orleans and Memphis and many of the smaller towns in west Tennessee and north Mississippi were frightfully stricken with yellow fever and the business of the country was demoralized greatly. For some cause or other, the west side of the river had very few cases. It was suggested by Dave Winton that the young people in Conway should get up a concert for the benefit of the yellow fever sufferers, and we did. The play which we put on was called "A Kiss in the Dark." I was the leading character, "Mr. Pettybones," and my wife in this play was Miss Fanny Winton. We realized about seventy-five dollars and turned it over to the proper committee.
 
In the early fall of 1878 I received information that my brother, Richard, was very ill near Ferris, Texas, and that I had better come to him at once. That was on Saturday morning, and I boarded the train that evening for Little Rock. On arriving there I had to hunt up my friend, Read, and we soon filled up on liquor and landed up in a gambling house. I completely forgot about my mission, and I have often thought since about what would have happened had I lost my money while gambling that night. But luckily, I did not, and left the place with a little more money than I had when I entered. Boarding the midnight train I was with my brother on Monday morning and took him back to Conway.
 
Freight Agent 
In the winter of 1878 I secured a position at the depot in Conway, checking freight in and out. Just then we were having quite a Negro immigration from north Mississippi and west Tennessee and they brought all their possessions, such as old pots, skillets, ovens, and even dogs. The handling of all their household goods became a great annoyance and I was none too gentle with it, breaking so many of their pots, ovens, and skillets that I got the nickname of "Skillets." I do not mind nicknames, for I have never been known by any other, but this one had too much color and handle to it to be very pleasing. I think my good friend, Max Frauenthal, first used this nickname for me.
 
[Shettles tells a rather lengthy and involved story of how he and his friends set up a "kangaroo court" to intimidate and frighten an elderly Negro who had complained that his dog had been lost in shipment. "Jessie Martin was the judge, a lawyer named Wright was the prosecutor, and Jack Williams was the main witness." At the end of the episode, some of the pranksters worried that they had carried the joke a little too far. In atonement, the man was given "flour, meal, and bacon enough to make a crop on."]
 
One of the men who came to Conway soon after I did was John A. Pence. He was a carpenter and stayed "off the stuff," married a Miss [Mollie] Jones, reared a family and made a good substantial citizen. George W. Donaghey came to town from a nearby farm, hired to John Pence, and began the battle of life. He became a successful business man and banker, and in 1908 was elected Governor of Arkansas. He was a good hearted and an honest man.
 
During my time in Conway it was a town of about one thousand population, and had a set of lively youngsters, Brother Moore, myself, Petway, Charley Cox, Dr. Hoss, and others. We all had some special girl at whose shrine we worshipped, but that was all that it amounted to with most of us. "Pa" Prince got married during the time I am writing about, but he had to go to east Tennessee to do so. The only one I can now think of who got married in the town was Ed Hilliard, and he had to steal his girl. [John] Henry Hartje went to some other place, I think it was to Lonoke County, to get his wife. Miss Louvenia Wallace, a relative of Hartje's wife, while on a visit to Conway met George Donaghey and they were married. I am quite sure that if the girls of Conway could have at that time realized that George Donaghey would be a future governor of the state, Miss Louvenia would have had some sharp competition. These girls of Conway were very kind to us. They would go riding with us; eat our candy, scent up on our perfume, but pass us up on the marrying proposition. (15)
 
A Temperance Lecturer 
On one occasion the famous temperance lecturer, Luther Benson of Indiana, came to Conway and began a series of temperance lectures. I went to hear him, and, captivated by his appeal, signed the pledge, and for a while was active in the work. Benson, who had been in the asylum, wrote a remarkable book, Fifteen Years in Hell. He lectured in Conway and sold several of his books. Then he went to Fort Smith, where the craving for whiskey overcame him, and he got on one of his characteristic sprees and played "Big Injun" to the great joy of saloon keepers. The good women of Ozark went up to Fort Smith and with kindness got him on his feet and brought him to Ozark. At that time no man

made a stronger appeal to young men to avoid the use of strong drink. About a year after his first visit to Conway, our band made arrangements for Benson to return and deliver three or four of his lectures.
 
In 1899, while I was pastor of one of our [Methodist] churches in Austin, Texas, Benson appeared in the Tenth Street Church there, but it was easy to see that the demon drink had done its worst for him. He was one of the best and saddest examples of what drink will do for a man when followed to its final end.
 
[William A.] "Uncle Billy" Clifton ran a hotel, or boarding house, and, when I first went to Conway, most of the boys boarded with him for a while. We made such sport of his food, and after standing as much of our foolishness as he could, he kicked most of us out. About that time a Mrs. Kenum [?] opened a good place, and there we drifted. All went well until a man by the name of [William E.] Crosby, a fruit tree agent, came along, married the landlady's daughter, took over the boarding house, and had the former proprietor as one of his boarders.
 
In the fall of 1879 I was elected public weigher for the town of Conway, a job that paid very well. At the same time I got into the coal business. I was making money and my prospects were fine. But I had long since backslid from my devotion to Luther Benson, and now had more money to waste on my bad habits, and hasten my downfall. But this cotton weighing job had much promise in it and I worked at it faithfully for three seasons. One summer, during this period, my friend Dalton of St. Louis gave me another chance, but through my besetting sin of drink I failed again. After my third failure in St. Louis, I returned to Conway and got my cotton weighing job back.
 
Family Grief 
In January, 1879, my father and mother and the children at home moved from Mississippi and settled near Conway. This was to me a great joy. Several other families from the Flatwoods came about the same time and others followed later so that we soon had quite a settlement in and around Conway of the Flatwoods folks.
 
My father made a crop on rented land the first year, and contracted for a piece of unimproved railroad land, but did not live to develop it. My mother had the best of health during the first year in Arkansas, but was stricken at the beginning of 1880, continued to grow worse, and passed away on July 1. This was the first sorrow to come to our family since the loss of my two brothers in 1864.
 
Walking along the road to Conway on the morning of my mother's death, my father said to me in outburst of heart-broken grief: "I wish I could go with her, as I do not see how I can live without her!" They had been married thirty-five years, lacking twenty-seven days, and had lived happily together. I do not remember ever to have heard an unkind word pass from either of them. His expression of grief to me seemed to have a very prophetic significance. He, with my oldest brother were at that time assembling the material with which to build a gin house on the railroad two miles above Conway. On August 16, following, a pile of lumber fell and crushed his ankle. From that he never recovered, passing away on December 1, 1880, just five months after the passing of my mother. (16) My mother's passing was a hard blow to me, but my father's long suffering, for he never was off his back again, and his death seemed to crush me, bringing me to my senses. For almost a year I tried to break my bad habits, but if you continue to associate with those of like habits you will go down sure, as I have done so many times. ...
 
During the summer of 1881 I visited Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a new town that had grown up overnight around the spring that was said to cure many troubles. The place had much of the Wild West Spirit, and saloons and gambling houses were very conveniently located in the business part of the town. While I had not yet broken my good resolutions [to give up drinking and gambling], I made these resorts the place in which to "loaf," which no doubt helped me to break my good resolutions. I was an applicant for the place of Postmaster of Conway, but, because I would not make some concessions to some of the political leaders of the then dominant party, I failed. (17)
 
Escape to Texas 
This was a good year for crops, and I had fine prospects as the weigher to lay by some money, but my old habits soon overwhelmed me, bearing out the truth of the Biblican saying that, when you have cast out the devil and later let him in again, he always brings back a number more and the last state is by far the worst. I had been in correspondence during the year with a young man in Caldwell, Texas, and I had been turning over in my mind many times the thought of going to Texas after the cotton season was over.
 
I had as my assistant a young man Henry Hartje and we were very intimate friends, so I confided in him as to my plans. When I thought I was ready to take my departure, which was on November 30, 1881, I turned over the job of weigher to him and took the late train for Little Rock. On Sunday morning I was in Texarkana on my way to Texas.
 
[Shettles ends his Arkansas narrative by telling of the anguish he suffered in trying to give up his drinking and gambling. He had stayed sober from July 1, 1880 to September 1, 1881, but "again reverted to all of my bad habits on the day I took my first drink and picked up my first deck of cards." Finally he came to the conclusion that he must break with his drinking and gambling friends if he was ever going to break his bad habits, and this convinced him to leave Conway. Unfortunately, he "went from bad to worse," becoming a professional gambler in Texas and "living a life of dissipation." It was not until nearly ten years later, on April 27, 1891, that he "became a Christian" and began his new life.]
 
Footnotes: 
(1) Now known as North Little Rock.
 (2) Jessie E. Martin was in 1875 the sheriff of Faulkner County; later, in both 1877-78 and 1889-90, he represented the county in the Arkansas House of Representatives.
 (3) Members of the Nixon family are buried in Pleasant Valley Cemetery. Also interred in this cemetery is Mary Crawford Browning (E. L. Shettles' grandmother, who moved with her son John Browning to Faulkner County in 1875) and other members of the Browning family.
 (4) The Cadron Gap, located at the present-day junction of U.S. 64 and Arkansas 25.
 (5) The old river port of Lewisburg was located south of Morrilton on the north bank of the Arkansas River.
 (6) The "Flatwoods" was the name given to a section of low, flat land in the northwestern part of Pontotoc County, Mississippi. Shettles described it as very muddy in the winter and spring and very dusty in the summer and fall. It was "very poor for farming purposes, and one had to be a good farmer, working early and late, in order to make a bare living for his family."
 (7) Shettles, who admitted that at this time in his life he was a heavy drinker, probably wrote this sentence with tongue-in-cheek.
 (8) James Mitchell bought the Arkansas Democrat, an evening paper, in 1878.
 (9) The subscription school was probably a forerunner of the Cadron Gap School.
 (10) Probably James V. Mitchell, a prominent local citizen.
 (11) This pastor was probably Rev. John J. Roberts (1817-1883), who was in his early sixties when he was assigned to the Conway Methodist church.
 (12) Before the construction of a tunnel under Cadron Ridge in 1904, the railroad ran north through Conway along present-day Washington Avenue and through the Gap. For a description of how freight trains could "double the hill" over the ridge at the Gap, see the article by Bill Pollard, "Railroading in Faulkner County," Faulkner County: Its Land and People (1986), p. 68.
 (13) John Townsend served two terms (1878-82) as sheriff and was suceeded by Andrew Jackson Witt, who also served two terms (1882-86).
 (14) W. M. Caldwell was a local attorney who had prepared the petition for the incorporation of Conway in 1875. He was an associate of Col. Asa P. Robinson, and Caldwell Street is named for him. B. J. McHenry was charged with the accidental killing of Caldwell. Arkansas Gazette (Sep. 14, 1878), p. 4.
 (15) Charles W. Cox, lawyer, Log Cabin editor, and later postmaster, married Carrie Bruce in 1882; attorney P. H. Prince did go to Tennessee in 1878 to marry Martha E. Hoss; George Edwin Hilliard married Mary Alice Davis in 1880; and John Henry Hartje in 1879 married Sallie Rebecca Ingram, a cousin of Louvenia Wallace.
 (16) Caroline Browning (1825-1880) and Abner (1822-1880) Shettles are buried in Cadron Gap Cemetery, as are several other members of the Shettles family, including their son Richard (1856-1894).
 (17) J. W. Ahernstiger was named Conway postmaster in 1881.
 
Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings
Fall and Winter, 1993, Volume XXXV, No. 3-4
Pages 9-22