The Butler BannerN e w s l e t t e r o f t h e B u t l e r C e n t e r f o r A r k a n s a s S t u d i e s

ButlerCenterEventsLegacies & LunchJune 2, 2010Nathania Sawyer: “How Shaped-Note Singing Shaped a Community: A History of Old Folks’ Singing”

July 7, 2010Mark Christ discusses his latest book, The Die Is Cast

Art NewsThrough July 31, 2010Arkansans in the Korean War—1950 to 1953, ASI - Atrium Gallery.

June 11 – August 28, 2010Mid-Southern Watercolorists 40th Annual Juried Exhibition, ASI - West Gallery. Opening reception during 2nd Friday Art Night, June 11, 2010, 5 to 8 p.m.

Butler CenterConferences/WorkshopsMay 22, 2010, 9 a.m.–3 p.m. Darragh Center, Main Library“Arkansas in the Forgotten War: The Korean War Remembered”

July 17, 2010, 9:30 a.m.–3 p.m. Darragh Center, Main Library“The Genealogist’s Camera,” Butler Center annual genealogy workshop

Visit www.butlercenter.org for more information

Volume 11, Number 5 Spring 2010

Jewish Experience in Arkansas

Barnett Family Collection

Hi s t o r i a n s both pro-f e s s i o n a l

and amateur have long recognized the unique treasure Ar-kansas has in A Cor-ner of the Tapestry: A History of the Jewish Experience in Arkan-sas, 1820s–1990s by Carolyn Gray Le-Master. What began as a class project in 1977 when the author was a journalism stu-dent at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock grew through the years into the most comprehensive history any state has of its Jewish population.

During her research, LeMaster became im-pressed with the involvement of Jews not only in the state’s economic growth, but in its po-

The Barnett Family Collection, donated to the Butler Center by the Barnett family of Batesville in 2007, contains

business and family records, documents, and correspondence dating from 1879 to 1988. These documents present a picture of the development of a typical Arkan-sas mercantile system, including timber production, farming and farm management, wholesale and retail businesses, and bank-ing.

Brothers Ira N. II, Charles A., and James F. Barnett, sons of Ira Barnett I and Mary Lou-ise Simpson Barnett, moved to Batesville from Sharp County in about 1890 and worked at the general store owned by their un-cle R. D. Williams. In 1895, the brothers bought out their uncle, and they incorporated Barnett

Brothers Mercantile in 1903. For nearly 100 years, a Barnett Brothers enterprise remained at the same Batesville location, until the Barnett

Department Store closed in 1988.The Barnett Brothers designa-

tion was maintained by the family through four generations. In ad-dition to the general merchandise store, they operated a number of other businesses in Batesville and Independence County over the years, including retail and whole-sale grocery and dry goods stores, a farm supply store, and a farm equipment distributorship.

The Barnett Brothers partner-ship, along with individual family members, was also active in real estate, lumber, and farming. As they invested in buying land, they first cleared the timber, selling the wood to such companies as the

A production of the story of Esther, presented by children of Congrega-tion Agudath Achim, Little Rock, Arkansas, ca. 1920s

Barnett Brothers ad Cont. on page 3

Cont. on page 7

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The Butler Banner is the quarterlynewsletter of the

Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Arkansas Studies InstituteCentral Arkansas Library System

100 S. Rock St.Little Rock, AR 72201

501.320.5700 - arkinfo@cals.orgwww.butlercenter.org

www.arstudies.org

Printed and distributed with private funds.Kathryn Heller: Editor

Mike Keckhaver: Design/Layout

Volume 11, Number 5

A Word from the CenterDavid Stricklin, Head of the Butler Center

Cont. from Barnett Collection, p.1

Save Paper,Reduce Waste

The Butler Center wants to save paper and reduce its waste. If you have an active email address, help us by opting to receive email-only alerts about our programs and events. Contact Kathryn Heller at kheller@cals.org or (501) 320-5717 to update your information.

Studebaker Brothers when that company was still making farm wagons and car-riages. Records in the collection docu-ment all stages of the process, from land purchase through the clearing process to the sale and transportation of the lumber.

As their land holdings grew, Barnett family members leased farmland on a sharecropping basis. Through their mer-cantile stores, Barnett businesses served the larger farming community as well as their own tenants. Records in the collec-tion include mortgages on crops and farm animals. Extensive correspondence re-lates to extending credit and to collecting

debts, especially during the Depression years of the 1930s.

Family members served on the boards of various community improvement ef-forts, such as the Curia Drainage Dis-trict, and were active in First Methodist Church of Batesville. The collection con-tains miscellaneous records of this com-munity service.

Because the Barnett businesses func-tioned through both world wars, the collection includes documents related to wartime rationing and regulations for businesses and individuals. In some cases, the booklets issued by the govern-ment defining the regulations and report-

ing requirements were preserved.The earliest documents, journals, and

ledgers pertain to the operation of the R. D. Williams Mercantile, continuing with simi-lar records for Barnett Brothers Mercantile and the other Barnett family enterprises. Documents include records of land trans-actions, crop mortgages, account collec-tions, land development, timber industry, and both individual and corporate income taxes.

The Barnett Family Collection is a rich resource for researchers interested in com-munity and business history in Arkansas, and especially in Batesville, Independence County, and northeast Arkansas. n

I t’s been a busy year. As hard as

it is to believe, we’ve been in our new digs in the Arkansas Studies Institute (ASI) for a full year now, and a lively one

it’s been. In our first year, we had about 82,000 people visit the ASI, compared to about 4,400 visiting the Butler Center during our last year in the CALS Main Library. We set a record on attendance at our programs, added a record number of manuscript collections, and saw stag-gering increases in visits to our online resources.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (EOA) website, for instance, recently received a visit from a resident of the tiny island nation of Vanuatu, mak-ing it the 185th country to have a visitor to the EOA. I’d love to know what some-body in Vanuatu wanted to know about Arkansas history! That person was one of more than 2 million visitors the EOA received in the last year. Those people viewed more than 10 million pages and accounted for almost 34 million “hits.”

Our Korean War Project has contin-ued to receive recognition, most recently from the Arkansas Historical Associa-tion, which gave this remarkable effort

to document the experiences of Arkansas Korean War veterans its Award of Merit at its spring meeting. And the ASI itself has won yet another prize, adding a na-tional award for outstanding steel construc-tion from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), whose citation con-cluded with these words, “The Arkansas Studies Institute weaves history, research, the citizenry, and a restored streetscape to-gether, healing a gaping wound in the ur-ban fabric, while serving as a beacon of knowledge.” Pretty heady praise!

One of the other things we’re embark-ing on is the creation of a small museum space in the oldest of the three buildings that make up the ASI complex. We’ve be-gun the fundraising effort for the Concor-dia Hall Museum, named after the Jewish social organization that operated in our 1882 Porbeck & Bowman building. You can read about our efforts to preserve and tell the stories of Jewish Arkansas on pag-es 1 and 7 of this issue of the Banner, and you can see acknowledgements of the first major gift we’ve received for the Concor-dia Hall project on pages 4 and 7. That gift came from the Union Pacific Foundation, and we’re very pleased to have received it. We’ll have more about this project in future issues of the Banner, and I invite you to help us continue to “weave his-tory, research, the citizenry, and a restored streetscape” into a bright future for the his-tory of Arkansas. n

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flash... Butler Center Events in the Spotlight

Drew Tessier from Union Pacific (far right) gives Bobby Roberts and David Stricklin a donation check in support of Concordia Hall.

ArtWeek ’10 press conference. (From left to right) Mayor Pat Hayes; Donna Hardcastle, Argenta Downtown Council; Sharon Priest, executive director of the Downtown Little Rock Partnership; Nan Plummer; First Lady Ginger Beebe; Mayor Mark Stodola. The Butler Center will take part in Central Arkansas’s 2010 ArtWeek.

April Legacies & Lunch speaker Tom Dillard signs copies of his book Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans.

Registration is now open for both the annual Genealogy Workshop and the conference built on the

Butler Center project FORGOTTEN: The Arkansas Korean War Project. Arkansas in the Forgotten War: The Korean War RememberedSaturday, May 22, 2010, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Darragh Center, Main Library

As an extension of its successful Ko-rean War project, the Butler Center will host its first conference on the Korean War. “Arkansas in the Forgotten War: The Korean War Remembered” will be a one-

day conference featuring five sessions highlighting various aspects of the war. The Genealogist’s CameraSaturday, July 17, 2010 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.Darragh Center, Main Library

The Butler Center, in conjunction with the Arkansas Genealogical Soci-ety, will present its annual genealogy workshop with featured speaker Des-mond Walls Allen, author of First Steps in Genealogy: A Beginner’s Guide to Researching Your Family History (1998). n

Workshop and Conference at CALS Darragh Center

Registration for the Genealogy Workshop and the Korean War Conference is easy:

Visit www.butlercenter.org/2010-conferences or contact Anna Lancaster at 501-320-5754 or alancaster@cals.org.

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Butler Center Books continues to expand its offerings with four new books for 2010. Two

of the books are available now. A Lit-tle Rock Boyhood: Growing Up in the Great Depression, by A. Cleveland Harrison, has just been released and is a wonderfully detailed memoir of how one young man and his family made it through difficult times. The Die Is Cast: Arkansas Goes to War, 1861, edited by Mark K. Christ, was released earlier this year and is now in its third printing. In his review of The Die Is Cast for the Arkansas Demo-crat-Gazette, Michael Storey writes that “the book’s five contributors are lively, entertaining and informative” in their descriptions of how Arkan-sans decided to join the Confederacy.

Later this year, Butler Center Books will publish a historical novel based on the life of Holocaust survivor and Little Rock resident Penina Krupitsky. Written by Phillip McMath and Em-ily Matson Lewis, The Broken Vase is the incredible story of a young woman’s flight from persecution.

Shirley Schuette and Nathania Sawyer, who are both staff members at the But-ler Center, are co-authors of a book that

New Titles from Butler Center Bookswill celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Central Arkansas Library System and its growth from a small lending library to a large regional system with 12 libraries. Due out this fall, the book is titled From Carnegie to Cyberspace: 100 Years at the Central Arkansas Library System.

Little Rock Boyhood author A. Cleveland Harrison also is the au-thor of Unsung Valor: A GI’s Story of World War II, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2000, and has written extensively for the Pulaski County Historical Review. He is professor emeritus at Auburn University and, earlier in his career, taught at Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) and the University of Arkansas in Fayette-ville.

Books published by the Butler Cen-ter are available from local and na-tional book sellers and also from the distributor, the University of Arkan-

sas Press at (800) 626-0090 or www.uapress.com. n

As part of the Butler Center’s on-going efforts to provide Arkan-sas teachers with history curric-

ulum, Butler Center educator Kay Bland selected ten sessions from this year’s Arkansas Literary Festival as meeting the Arkansas Department of Education’s (ADE) “Rules for Governing Profession-al Development” requirements. Arkansas educators need two hours of professional development annually for parental in-volvement techniques and two hours an-nually for those who teach Arkansas his-tory.

Working with Brad Mooy, Arkansas Literary Festival coordinator, Bland selected sessions to meet these needs along with literacy curriculum content in writing and educational technology content. Educators registered at these pre-selected sessions, and Bland pro-vided documentation of their atten-dance using emailed certificates.

The ADE “Rules for Governing Pro-fessional Development” also provide a structure for literacy curriculum content in reading, and most of the festival’s ses-sions were approvable under these guide-lines.

The Central Arkansas Library Sys-tem (CALS) has been designated as an ADE professional development provider since 2007. As the Butler Center educa-tor, Bland develops and submits the as-surances application annually for CALS. All educator professional development files are maintained by Bland for the five years the ADE requires.

Programs or conferences sponsored by CALS or the Butler Center that meet the guidelines for professional development are publicized to educators. The next event that may be used as professional development is the Korean War con-ference, which will be held on May 22, 2010. n

History Curriculum Provided The ASIGalleriesArt & Gifts Galore

401 PresidentClinton Ave.

DowntownLittle Rock’sRiver Market

Districtwww.arstudies.org

www.butlercenter.org/art

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the encyclopedia of

Arkansas history & culture

Explorations of Arkansas History GuyLancaster

WANTED: Authors and Media

We need entries, photographs, documents, videos, maps, and audio clips to help make the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture the most complete resource on Arkansas history.

John Andrew RiggsHarvey Jones

Nimrod P. MenifeeHenry Merrell

Pickens W. Black Sr.If you have pictures or other media, please contact Mike Keckhaver at mkeckhaver@

encyclopediaofarkansas.net

Entries Needing Authors:Agriculture Programs, Federal

Communist PartyElection Fraud

Indochinese Resettlement ProgramOzark UFO Conference

VaporsUSS Arkansas CGN-41

Wimpy Wilson

If you would like to write one of these entries, please contact Anna Lancaster at

alancaster@encyclopediaofarkansas.net

Entries Needing Media (photographs, etc.):Caddo River Lumber Company

Narrow Gauge RailroadsDavid Auburn

Harold Raymond (Hal) SmithPernella Anderson

Jean Bernard BossuDavid Levering Lewis

James Brown (Jim) MillerJohn Cecil

Roosevelt “The Honeydripper” SykesFrances Lillian (F.L.) Blaisdell

Bradley BunchJohn Garrett WhitesideBlakely Mountain Dam

Nick Daniel (Nicky) BaconGrider Army Air FieldJames Howell Street

Lorraine Albert CranfordMercer Mayer

Sidney WallaceRobert Nighthawk

Arkansas’s contingent in the U.S. Senate has consisted of some noteworthy political power-

houses. In the twentieth century alone, we had Joe T. Robinson, J. William Ful-bright, John L. McClellan, Dale Bum-pers, and David Pryor. Also notewor-thy is the fact that our state elected the first woman to the U.S. Senate—Hattie Caraway. However, not all Arkansans sent to what has been called “the most exclusive club in the world” are so well known, even within the history commu-nity. Of William King Sebastian, who

served from 1848 to 1861, it was once written, “It was not Sebastian’s style to make much of an impression in the Sen-ate.” But he was the youngest senator in the Thirtieth U.S. Congress and one of two who did not submit his resignation at the start of the Civil War. He was instead expelled, along with future president An-drew Johnson. Interestingly, Alexander McDonald, elected to the Senate after the constitutional convention of 1868, lent his support for the impeached President Johnson, persuading many senators to vote against conviction. During his short

term in the Senate, Benjamin Franklin Rice pushed for Oklahoma statehood in 1870 and had a small role in the Brooks-Baxter War, but he was probably better known at the time for allegations of impropriety relating to his and several partners’ pur-chase of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad.

Though their names are not heralded today, their actions in and beyond the Senate helped shape both Arkansas and the nation, and the Encyclopedia of Ar-kansas preserves a record of their lives and careers so that we can better under-stand the shape of our history. n

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BUTLER CENTER DONORSRichard B. Homard B. Houser Joyce Howard Ray Jenkins, Fort Collins, COWanda Jones Jon Kennedy Kerry L. Narisara McDermott Susan McGowan Edward T. Person Harry K. Peterson Jim Pfeifer Mike Polston James E. Purvis William F. Rector Jr. Walter Rhodes Martha Rosenbaum Nathania Sawyer Rhonda Stewart David Stricklin Diann Sutherlin Earnest Tate Diane Turner

Joyce Weaver Vernie C. WhitakerArkansas Press Services, Inc Butler Center Monetary DonationsLynn Morrow

In support of Concordia HallUnion Pacific Foundation

In support of the Butler BannerRobert BaileyCraighead County Public LibraryMontgomery County Historical SocietyJohn RagsdaleElaine Scott

In memory of Brownie LedbetterBob Razer David Stricklin

In honor of Russell Baker Daughters of the American Revolution - Gilbert Marshal Chapter

Butler Center Item DonationsDodd Aizpurua Rafael Aizpurua Morris Arnold J. Barentine, Dallas TXCarl E. Baskin Bobby L. Coker Clyde Brooks Thelma Carroll, Virginia Beach, VASybil Crawford Leslie Creed John Cross Jacque Dunaway Judy Dunaway Pam Dunaway Frank A. Fowlkes Carl Freyaldenhoven George W. Gatliff Ron Greer J.C. Griffin Norman Harrell, Burleson, TXNancy Hendricks Jack Hill

Transcripts from more

than 400 interviews are included in the collection.

Cont. from Jewish Experience, p.1litical, social, and cultural life. She ex-plored these aspects of community and state history, spanning from 1823, when Abraham Block arrived in Washington, Arkansas, to the 1990s, when her book was published. Indeed, she continued to collect material relevant to Arkansas Jewry up until the moment she donated her research papers to the Butler Center in 2008.

Block, the state’s earliest known Jew-ish resident, was already a successful merchant in Richmond when he decided to take advantage of the flourishing trade with Mexico along the Southwest Trail through Arkansas. Later immigrants came as peddlers, carrying goods from merchants to the north and east. As their success allowed, they established local businesses, playing a critical role in Ar-kansas’s economy.

The Carolyn Gray LeMaster Arkansas Jewish History Collection contains docu-ments, photographs, correspondence, and artifacts collected during the course of LeMaster’s work on the book. Also in-cluded is research material for her book The Ottenheimers of Arkansas, as well as numerous articles, essays, and presenta-tions.

LeMaster, who quit her job to work full time on her research, received funding from the Arkansas Endowment for the Humanities (now the Arkansas Humani-ties Council). She traveled throughout Arkansas visiting any community that could be determined as having had Jew-ish residents. She gathered data especial-

The family and individual stories are at the core of the collection, grouped by the city or town in which the people lived. The material ranges from one or two clip-pings for some families to multiple boxes of folders in other cases. Prominent Jews of Arkansas include Federal Judge Ja-cob Trieber, the Ottenheimer family, and Rabbi Ira Sanders.

In addition to family and business his-tories, LeMaster chronicled the forma-tions and activities of Jewish congrega-tions and community organizations. The collection contains thousands of copies of newspaper clippings, journal articles, and book excerpts. These deal with the background history of Arkansas and the South, the history of individual towns, the lives of Jewish settlers, and the set-tlers’ contributions to the local economy and culture. The collection also contains primary sources, both copies and origi-nal, that tell stories of people who adapt-ed to a new land, often while struggling to maintain their cultural identity and connections to their old homes.

The Butler Center for Arkansas Stud-ies is honored by LeMaster’s donation of her research material and anticipates an early summer 2010 release of the collection. n

ly by visiting cemeteries and interview-ing members of the Jewish community. Transcripts from more than 400 inter-views are included in the collection. Jew-ish residents and organizations provided invaluable assistance and cooperation, giving her unprecedented access to fam-ily and community records.

Central Arkansas Library System100 S. Rock Street

Little Rock, AR 72201

NON-PROFITU.S. POSTAGE

PAIDLITTLE ROCK, AR

PERMIT #183

Images from Our Collection

The city of Atkins was founded in 1872 at a major crossroads of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. The town quickly grew, and by the time it incorporated on November 3, 1876, it was home to approximately 300 people. Among the many arrivals were German immigrants, who moved to the area for railroad work. From the time of its incorporation to the time when this picture was taken in 1896, the town had more than doubled, its growth attested by the many students enrolled in the local public school.