The Effort to Move the County Seat
by Frank E. Robins, George W. Donaghey, W. W. Blessing, et al.
 
 
Editor's Note: Information for this article was gathered with the assistance of Robert Hambuchen, Charles D. Parsons, Nelda Ussery in the office of the Faulkner County Circuit Clerk and Recorder, and Robert L. Ott of Ott Land Title Company.
 
On October 15, 1937, Frank E. Robins (1880-1949), longtime editor and publisher of the Log Cabin Democrat and an authority on Faulkner County history, made a speech at the dedication of the new Faulkner County Courthouse. The speech was printed in the daily newspaper and many years later in Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings. (1)
 
In his speech Robins characterized the Arkansas General Assembly in 1873 as "dominated by scalawags and carpetbaggers," and claimed that Faulkner and eight other counties were created by the legislature "to provide jobs and opportunities for a group of renegades for whom other positions could not be found. (2)
 
The act creating Faulkner County (signed into law by Governor Elisha Baxter on April 12, 1873) designated Conway Station as the temporary "seat of justice," and established a board (A. D. Thomas, A. F. Livingston, and J. F. Comstock) to locate within six months a permanent seat of county government. This board selected Conway Station as the county seat. On September 19, 1873, Colonel Asa P. Robinson donated the present site of the Faulkner County Courthouse. (3) Seven months later, on April 10, 1874, the Faulkner County Board of Supervisors directed that a courthouse and jail be built on the site in Conway Station donated by Col. Robinson. (The town of Conway would be incorporated in 1875.)
 
Frank Robins stated that, according to the records of the Faulkner County Court dated July 7, 1874, documents signed by one-third of the qualified voters of Faulkner County petitioned that the county seat be removed from Conway Station to the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 21, Township 6 North, Range 12 West, designated on the petition as'' Arnoldsburg." On the same day the Board of Supervisors "set aside" the $30,000 appropriation for a courthouse. The county seat election was ordered to be held on November 3, 1874, but, according to Robins, the record did not show whether or not it was held. At any rate, Conway remained the county seat and the first Faulkner County courthouse was erected on the land donated by Robinson. (4)
 
It should be noted that in 1873-74 the great majority of the residents of the new county lived in central and northern Faulkner County - in and near the communities of Holland, Greenbrier, Cadron Cove (Martinville), Guy, Sulphur Springs (Enders), Enola, Mount Vernon, and Vilonia. These citizens no doubt resented that the county seat was located in the new settlement at Conway Station which was owned and dominated by newcomers like the Connecticut "Yankee" Asa P. Robinson. But, it was also true that Conway was growing in population, primarily because it was the main station on the only railroad running through the county.
 
Two other sources mention the question of the location of the county seat. In 1936, former Arkansas Governor George W. Donaghey made a "Founders' Day" speech at Arkansas State Teachers College. In his talk, Donaghey said: "As one of the founders of this community, I came to Faulkner County in 1874, the year in which it was created and before the county seat was located. I remember the contest for the seat of its court house between Arnoldsburg and Conway." (5)
 
In 1933, W. W. Blessing wrote a series of articles on "Pioneer Days in Faulkner County" which were printed in the Log Cabin Democrat. One article stated that he had first come to Conway Station in 1872, when the settlement was in a "slashy, crawfishy, boggy country About that time a question arose as to the location of the county seat, whether it should be in Conway or Holland. Holland is near the center of the county while Conway is toward the southwest corner of the county. The names of both places were put on the ticket. In making out the ballots, many of the voters wrote on the ticket 'For the Center,' meaning Holland. None of these ballots were counted and it was claimed that if these votes had been cast for Holland, Holland instead of Conway would have been the county seat. Many of the voters expressed dissatisfaction with the results of the county seat election. (6)
 
The Location of "Arnoldsburg"
 
According to the location described in the petition, Arnoldsburg was about three miles south of the Holland community and close to the center of Faulkner County. The first appearance of the 40-acre tract on land ownership records is that on January 31, 1850 it came under the ownership of William E. Woodruff "by Choctaw Certificate." Woodruff, the editor and publisher of the Arkansas Gazette, sold the land to Andrew Hutt less than three months later on March 16. Unfortunately, there are no extant documents indicating the ownership of the tract between 1858 and 1879 - specifically, we do not know who owned the land in 1874. (7)
 
The 40-acre area is now owned by Robert Hambuchen of Conway, who on November 21, 1995, led the editor of this journal to the place he believes Arnoldsburg was located. The site is less than one-half mile west of the 90 - degree curve in Arkansas 287 which is one mile west of 287's junction with
Arkansas 36.
 
Hambuchen pointed out the old bed of a north-south road (the Little Rock - Clinton Road) (8) which crossed the old bed of an east-west road (the Cascade Springs-Conway Road) at a point just a few yards from a natural spring - a logical place for a settlement. When Hambuchen bought the property in 1974, there were evidences of two or three former buildings on the northwest corner of the old crossroads, but the age and nature of the structures could not be determined. Interestingly, the floors of a couple of "outbuildings" were made of native stones.
Hambuchen stated that if he ever does sell his land in the area, he will retain the three or four acres which contain the site of "Arnoldsburg," the "nearly" seat of Faulkner County.
 
Footnotes:
 
(1) Frank E. Robins, "Faulkner County's First Courthouse," Log Cabin Democrat (October 18, 1937); Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings, XXIV (Fall & Winter 1982), pp.2-6.
 
(2) The other eight counties created in 1873 were Baxter, Clayton (later Clay), Dorsey (later Cleveland), Garland, Howard, Lee, Lonoke, and Stone. See also Guy W. Murphy, "The Birth of Faulkner County," Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings, V (March 1963), pp. 7-13.
 
(3) Brooks Green and Shelea McKenzie, "Establishment of the County," Faulkner County: Its Land and People (Conway: Faulkner County Historical Society, 1986), pp. 15-16. This account by Green and McKenzie differs in a few respects from the events as related by Robins in his speech, but the end results are the same.
 
(4) The earliest county court records currently in the office of the Faulkner County Clerk are in ledger "County Court B," with the earliest entry dated September 1875. Robins may have had access in 1937 to earlier records in ledger "County Court A," which has since been misplaced or destroyed.
 
(5) Document SMC 8, University of Central Arkansas Archives. Donaghey was incorrect on the date that Faulkner County had been created.
 
(6) Log Cabin Democrat (June 13, 1933), p. 2. In 1860, W. W. Blessing and others in his family had settled just north of what is now Woolly Hollow State Park.
 
(7) Thomas Carter bought the 40-acre tract in 1858 and J. K. Lovie sold it in 1879 to J. B. Bass.
 
(8) In 1973, W. E. Bailey of Enola prepared a historical map of Faulkner County which showed, among other things, the approximate route of roads in 1873. This map shows the Little Rock-Clinton Road running due north through "Bass Gap" and the southeast quarter of Section 21, Township 6 North, Range 12 West.
 
 
Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings
Volume XXXVIII, Spring and Summer, 1996
pp. 1-3