History of Lambethville

Taken from

“A History of Crittenden County, Arkansas”

by Margaret Elizabeth Woolfolk

 

 

Crittenden County, Arkansas

 

 

Reconstructed Burials at Golightly Mounds

Various News Articles for Golightly Mounds

Sanders, One of the Families Buried at Golightly Mounds

 

 

Point Scudder – Old River – Lambethville

 

 

Soybean fields now cover what was once the village of Lambethville, a Mississippi River landing about five miles east of Turrell which can be reached by traveling County Roads 6 and 333 across the levee.

There is nothing there to indicate that once there was a school which also served as a church, a large country store, a lumber mill, gins, a warehouse for river shipments, and a number of dwellings.  Nor is there any evidence that before these existed there was an Indian settlement of the Mississippi tribe.  Mounds which were once in the area have been leveled for farming.

There is no evidence either of the elevated tramway that once started near the Mississippi River levee and extended westward about two miles, providing a route over bottom land, that was frequently flooded, and Brush Lake.  One can ascertain where the bed of the Mississippi River once was near the west end of this tramway for there still remains a definite rise in the land, once the west bank.

Even the Mississippi has moved away from the site of the town, leaving what is called Old River.  To the east of Old River’s southern end is Brandywine Island, once known as Brandywine Point.

Old River was described by the writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) as the most dangerous area for boaters on the lower Mississippi.  Boatmen called it the Devil’s Elbow.  Before 1876, the river ran on the west side of Brandywine Island, but the river decided to make a cutoff to the north of Centennial Cutoff of 1876 – shortening its navigational channel by about 30 miles and moving along the east side of Brandywine.  The cutoff enlarged Centennial Island north of Old River and west of Brandywine and removed Islands 37 and 38.

After the cutoff, arguments over state boundaries prevailed until 1918 when the United States Supreme Court determined it was the boundary that was established in 1876.

In the same area as Lambethville was the Pacific Place, near where Frenchman’s Bayou emptied into the Mississippi River.  Pacific Place was owned by George S. Fogleman.  Fogleman came to this country from Europe as a middle-aged man and to this county by keel boat about 1824 when land was selling for about 10 cents per acre.  He made his living as a woodchopper and he and his wife carried wood on their backs to the steamboat landing to sell until he was able to buy animals.  They bought land with their profits.  At one time, he owned about 20,000 acres, including 21 miles of frontage on the Mississippi, and 65 male slaves.  He died in 1865 and his wife died two or three years later.

The Foglemans were the parents of Mississippi Fogleman, who married C. F. Morris, the first steamboat agent in Memphis and a clerk on the first boat built at Memphis.  After Fogleman’s death, C. F. Morris began farming Pacific Place.  G. F. Morris, one of the four children of D. F. and Mississippi Morris, later farmed the tract after inheriting about 17,000 acres.  G. F. Morris married Mary Speck and they had two sons.  In the early 1800’s other acreage in the area was owned by C. O. Smith and William Hemmingway.

James O. Thresher of Turrell, a former Lambethville resident said that among the steamboats that traveled the river was one named Pacific, which sank in the Devil’s Elbow, and Fogleman named the plantation for that boat.  The Pacific, a sidewheeler of 387 tons, was constructed in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1829, and sank March 16, 1841, with no loss of life.  Its home port was New Orleans.  However, members of the Fogleman family claim the plantation was named for another Fogleman daughter.

It is said that a lantern-lit tower that the Morris family kept at their landing is credited with causing navigational lights to be placed along the Mississippi River. Cannonballs fired at the tower by the Federals during the Civil War were recovered by later owners.

The Pacific Place was purchased in 1890 by Robert Hugh Golightly, whose home place had been at Poplar and Highland in Memphis.  The tale goes that Golightly had decided to relocate and was en route to Pecan Point to look at land when he stopped to visit the Morris family.  He liked their land so much that he made arrangements to return the next year and buy 1,000 acres of it.  When Golightly came to his new Arkansas holdings, he had his Memphis home dismantled and brought there by boat to be reassembled.  Golightly added to his holdings and at this death on March 10, 1910, owned some 6,000 acres.

Golightly’s three sons, Hugh, Jr., William, and Byrd, and one of his two daughters, Annie Lou, continued to operate the farm, gins, and sawmill until it sold in 1951.  Some 2,500 acres of the Golightly land was still in virgin cypress timber until it was cut and sold in the 1940’s for $185,000.

In January, 1939, Pacific Place was leased by the Federal Government for a special Farmers Home Administration project, operated by the Clarkedale Homestead Association, Inc., then purchased by D. J. Thomas and Don B. Weiner of Memphis for about $3 million December 28, 1951.  The Weiners had made their fortune in the manufacturing of double bubble gum.

Another large landowner of the area was Margie (Mrs. J. L.) Strong who had a 1,200-acre farm called Holly Grove a short distance north of the Pacific Place.  She was especially interested in the cultivation of peaches and pears and became a large shipper of the fruits to Memphis and New Orleans markets.  Mrs. Strong was credited with originating 24 varieties of peaches.  Her father, William Dickson, who had been prominent in Alabama before the Civil War, was one of the promoters of the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad and in that connection acquired land in Crittenden County.  Holly Grove Landing and Pacific Place Landing were eliminated by the Centennial Cutoff.

Point Scudder was at the mouth of Old River.  Thresher remembered a floorless warehouse at this site where shipments arriving by boat were kept by a man named Stevens until they could be picked up by the consignee.  Almost all staples at that time came in barrel lots.  Thresher said much of the timber cut in the area was used to make rafts at Lambethville or Scudder and towed to a Memphis market.

Holly Grove had the first post office in the area with George S. Ferguson named as postmaster there February 25, 1859.  January 20, 1860, Pacific Place became the post office with Charles F. Morris as postmaster.  He served until the office was discontinued February 4, 1879, except for a six-month period (November 30, 1869-June 3, 1870) when C. M. Mahon was postmaster.  George W. Thresher was named postmaster at Scudder May 21, 1883, and served until the office was transferred to Lambethville March 24, 1884.

When Lambethville’s post office was established, Warner Lambeth became the first postmaster.  He was succeeded by James T. Lambeth (appointed first March 7, 1890, and again March 2, 1899), George W. Phillips (appointed January 12, 1894), Walter Lambeth (appointed April 9, 1901), George W. Daniels (appointed February 9, 1909), and Oliver L. Sanders (appointed August 4, 1913). The office was discontinued April 19, 1924.

Lambethville was established in 1880 when James T. Lambeth bought about 400 acres of timbered land to supply a Crittenden County, Kentucky, sawmill that he and his brothers, Walter E. and Warner (J. T.’s twin), operated as Lambeth Brothers.  They also had a towboat, Tidal Wave, which operated form Evansville, Indiana, to Memphis, resulting in James T. Lambeth being known as “Captain Lambeth”.  In addition to the timbered land, James T. Lambeth bought about 75 acres of cleared land on which he built a store, a gin, a sawmill, and his two-story home which was on stilts.  The home later burned.

Lambeth’s son, Walter, was killed while working at the family’s sawmill.  He left a young widow and a son.  The young widow was the former Vernon Sharp, who had come to Lambethville from Huntsville, Alabama, as an 18-year-old with her father, traveling the river by houseboat.  She later married Oliver L. Sanders who had large farming interests nearby.  Their children included Oliver L. Sanders, Jr., who represented Crittenden County in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1949-50.

Many of Lambethville’s other early residents lived in tents.  As homes were built in an area from about a mile north of the present Turrell-Lambethville road to about a half-mile south of the road, the houses – single pen, double pen or bungalow type – dotted the west side of the road to the river.  Most Lambethville residents were involved in lumbering, but farming interests began to develop as the land was cleared.

Another early Lambethville resident was Mary Etter (Mrs. A. B.) McCorkle, who came there in 1894, and could recall the prevalence of wild game in the sector.  Wild turkeys, she said, could be killed in one’s backyard.  They were so plentiful that only turkey breasts were used.  Thresher described the turkey population as being “thick as blackbirds.”  Mrs. McCorkle also recalled that all entertaining was done in the home, and it was a day-long trip to go to church at Gilmore.  For special entertainment there were picnics, horseback riding, fishing, and chasing wild horses.

Thresher’s memories of Lambethville also included the levee break north of Lambethville in 1913. This caused the area to be under about 15 feet of water.  “Residents had to rush to save their livestock, and the water coming in sounded like a train and looked like barrels rolling,” he said.

A Dr. Ramadeau was the first physician to serve the area.  Some of the other early Lambethville residents also included Robert S. Speegle, L. F. Etter, A. B. McCorkle, Martha Ellen Gosnell, the Sam Smiths, the G. C. Dunavents, the Brizendines, W. O. Abston, J. S. Haynie, H. Fleming, J. A. Jones, D. M. Albien, and the Walter Raglands.  Most of these people later moved to Turrell.

After the completion of the levee in the early 1900’s, Lambethville moved from its river-side location west of the levee for protection from flood waters.  A cemetery which served the community also was on the west side of the levee atop an Indian mound, but its stones have all been moved and the mound leveled by farmers.

Near Lambethville was probably the first airplane crash in Crittenden County.  It happened in 1917 when a World War I trainer plane crashed in a hay field.  Fortunately, the pilot was able to make repairs and flew the plane out while everybody in the area gathered to watch.