 |
| DELL, ARKANSAS abt 1951 |
A Brief History of Dell by Mrs. Otto Bradberry
"Mrs. Otto Bradberry of the Lost Cane Community in North Mississippi County gave this brief history of Dell, Arkansas, during the years of 1902-1911, to her daughter, Mrs. Olive Bradberry Ritter, who wanted to keep the information for her children and her brother's children and to share it with the Mississippi County Historical Society:
Mrs. Bradberry moved to Dell from Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, in the spring of 1903, when she was 11 years old. Previously the town was called Rozelle. When the citizens there learned that there was another town in the state named Rozelle, they changed the name to Dell. She does not know why they gave it that name.
In 1902 a new railroad had been built that ran through Dell. It was called the Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern. It made a round trip from Jonesboro to Blytheville each day. The initials, J. L. C. & E., helped the amateur poets to come up with some rhymes such as:
" J. L. C & C., Pay for you riding, and get your rocking free." The road had been built hurriedly and the riding was quite rough.
The streets were mud, filled with stumps and logs, that spring. The depot was a box car.
There was one store in which the post office was housed. The store owner, J. D. Richardson, was also the postmaster. The post office had been located near the bayou, which runs just north of town, until the trains started running.
There was no church; there was one at Ekron, just a few miles north. The first church, which was built later, was a Methodist church.
Since it was a lumber town and surrounded by virgin timber, except for about 10 or 12 cleared places that were used as farm land, there were several men who came to work for short periods of time, working at timber cutting, sawmills, stave mills and other lumber jobs. There was a hotel which housed these people. It was a wooden, box, two-story building, with about 40 rooms.
As in all frontier towns, there was a saloon.
Teachers during the early part of the century were J. D. Swift, John Shearer, Tom Stubbs, and Mrs. Della Angleton. It was a one-room school for grades one throught eight.
The hotel which had outdoor plumbing and a pump in the kitchen, was operated by John and Martha Riggs and daughter Lou, who had moved there from Illinois.
Early farmers were Augustus Koehler, Mr. Peterson, John, Sam, and Hugh Perry, John, Dick and Clay Lott, Ben Sizemore, George Ray, Joe Nanny, George Nanny, Seth Southwood, and Sam, Don and Will Hector. Dell is located in Hector township, named for this family.
One man was shot and killed on Main Street in 1911. A few years later a man was murdereed on Main Street in front of the saloon.
The town, except for the few farms, was surrounded by heavy forests where there were wolves, bobcats, bears and many kind of small animals, such as squirrels, mink, oposums, coons and rabbits. Wolves howled at night and could be heard in Dell, even as late as 1915.
There were two Indian mounds north of town on the J. F. Mooney farm. No potter or skeletons were ever found in them. One of them was used as a cemetery by the early settlers, because the land was often flooded before the levees were built. The cemetery is still preserved."
 |
| Shearer Family-Dell, AR |
