Historical records leave clues for solving the mystery of Millie (Part Two)

By Jane Wilkerson, archival assistant

In this space last month, I began the account of my trying to straighten out the tangled web of family history, folklore and out-and-out statistics[1] that have survived concerning my great-great grandmother, Millie. Millie and her children continued to haunt me. Her son George lived --proved by the fact I am here -- but where were the rest?

Family stories from my father and grandparents indicated that George met his wife, Laura Elmore, while staying with his grandparents Oliver and Melena Blaylock Miller of Carroll County, Arkansas. With this information, I could begin looking for George and his siblings either in the household of Oliver Miller and those of any of his children. This would seem to have simplified things, but “not so fast, podnuh:” The nature of entries in the census schedules made it difficult to confirm the relationships of other residents to the head of the household. If the children were living in a male Miller’s household, particularly if they took (legally or informally) the household name, the paternity of the child could not be determined. It was possible they were there, but as I searched further in the records, it led to disappointment. Within the female homes, all children were under the husband’s surname. Therefore, I was again at a dead end.

Before long, however, Millie’s secrets slowly began to emerge … with the help of a little sheer luck in the form of a public-spirited relative.

On March 6, 2002, my cousin, Gary Risley, brought into the Arkansas History Commission a post office ledger from Marion County, Arkansas. Used for issuing domestic money orders, it records transactions from July 1, 1901 to Dec. 31, 1913. His father had managed to save the ledger from the trash during the demolishing of the old post office. It was (and remains) a wonderful and significant documentary source for the area, particularly because Marion County, like many other northern Arkansas Counties, suffers from what facetious archivists term “courthouse fire syndrome.” The ledger was to be microfilmed for preservation but before this happened, my supervisor decided that it would be good to transcribe the ledger — and assigned me the task. The reasoning behind this was that much of the penmanship in the ledger was hard to read; carefully transcribing the entries would make it possible to index the ledger, providing an “entry point’ for the document.

My knowledge of the area’s surnames proved to be valuable as I went through each page. These were “my” people, and their neighbors, and this connection kept me on task. The job took a while; progress depended on how busy we were in the research room or if more investigation was required to determine the correct spellings of names. However, it was well worth it for all the information I gathered on my family and their neighbors: I confirmed things I had already discovered and uncovered the occasional new nugget. The biggest discovery came when I reached the page for Dec. 9, 1904. On that day, G. W. (George Washington) Miller sent a money order for $5 to one “Milley Sweem” in Baxter Springs, Kansas.

“Milley”-- could it be? Was this “my” Millie? Online genealogical resources were not as rich in 2002 as they are today, but I cast my net, looking for a marriage, death certificate or an obituary for someone named Millie Sweem. In May 2002, I emailed the Cherokee County Genealogical/Historical Society in Kansas, asking if they might have any city or business directories from the area dating from around 1905. The answer was “no,” but there was something positive. In the society’s indexes, the research staff had discovered an Edward Sweem, buried in Baxter Springs, born in 1825 and died in 1906. The reply noted that there existed a marriage record, dated Jan. 18, 1908, for one Millie Sweem, age 70, to P.P. Prather of Texas, age 68. As importantly, the Cherokee County society supplied me with a death year and burial location for Millie: She died in 1916 and was buried in the Baxter Springs Cemetery.

Immediately, I ordered Millie Prather’s death certificate. When it arrived, I quickly noticed some familiar information, as well as some new points of possible confusion. Millie A. Prather had been born on May 11, 1839 in Tennessee; the year and place agreed with what I knew of “my” Millie. Her occupation was listed as “housekeeper and carpet weaver,” and her father was one Thomas Seals.

From this, my research journey led me back toward War Eagle Township in Madison County, Arkansas in search of a Thomas Seals on the 1860 census. To my horror, no person by that name was listed in the area, not even in Carroll County. From my many years in doing research I have learned that just because something is in writing, it may not be correct. Did the informant really know the name of Millie’s father? From looking at the death certificate, we know that he or she didn’t know the mother. With this in mind, I began looking at all the Seals in the area and tracing them back to the 1850 census to see if any of them had a daughter by the name of Millie. My strongest lead was an Elizabeth Seals, 43, living in War Eagle Township. She had been born in Tennessee and had been the eldest child in her household.

As I dug further and cast a wider net, I located a Zely Seals on the 1860 mortality census for Madison County; he was 54 years old and died that January of pneumonia. In 1850 though, the family was not there. Where had he or they come from? More digging revealed a certain Z. Seals, located in Marion Township in White County, Arkansas. His wife was Elizabeth, born in Tennessee, 34 years of age. Everything seemed to match, even the children’s names and ages, with one exception: Amelia age 12, born in Tennessee. Who could this young woman have been? The age and birth place was right for “my” Millie, but the name … after more reading, I solved the riddle. In modern times “Millie” is usually a short form of “Millicent” but it was also a common diminutive of … Amelia! So, Millie and Amelia were certainly the same person.

As for “Zely,” Amelia’s father’s first name was listed as “Zealous,” which could easily have been thus contracted. My hunch was later confirmed through my DNA and other descendants from Zealous’s other daughters. Was “Thomas” his middle name or a familiar name, one he preferred to Zealous? At this point, it’s anyone’s guess; the census schedules can’t reveal quite everything.

From this, my research turned to Millie’s husbands; did they have a connection to Arkansas? And who, for that matter, was this Edward Sweem? Since some of the Baxter Springs, Kansas, newspapers were available online, I found a partial answer quickly… as well as another puzzlement! Edward J. Sweem, died at at the age of 80 years, 8 months and 17 days, on Jan. 25, 1906. Survivors were his daughter Mrs. Embree of Baxter Springs, and six children, but … there was no mention of a wife.

With Millie “missing in action,” the next step was to find Edward Sweem on the census records. It was a long shot, but 1900s census schedules might be my only chance to find him and Millie together. The Kansas census proved to be disappointing, but in the Arkansas schedules there was an Edward J. Sweem listed as living with his son-in-law and daughter in Harrison (Boone County). Sweem’s listed birth year, 1825, agreed with his age at time of death in 1906, so this counted as a strong lead.

My next step was to turn to the mysterious Texan, P.P. Prather. As I stated earlier, he and Millie married in 1908. According to the U.S. Census and the Kansas state census records, the couple lived in Baxter Springs until Millie’s death. In fact, according to her obituary, printed in the Baxter Springs News, Mr. Prather had found her on the morning of June 14, 1916 in bed, where she had passed away peacefully. Sometime after her death, he moved to Harrison, Arkansas; this is documented by his appearance in the 1920 Census schedules from there, which indicated his residence in the County Home. Prather died in the home on March 3, 1924. When I checked the Harrison Daily Times for an obituary, not only did they run one, it contained a surprise: P.P. Prather was, in fact, the Rev. Prather, a minister in the Christian church, ordained on Feb. 25, 1894. Thus, I had one hypothesis proved out: Both Prather and Sweem had a documentable Boone County connection.

My search for Prather continued. Although he had been described as being from Texas, he had lived in Dodd City Township in Marion County, Arkansas before his marriage to Millie. In 1894, he married one Malissa Stonecipher in the same county. Going back one step on the Census, I discovered he was there in 1880. This census gave me his first name (Philip) and that of his first wife (Sarah). The trail then went to Missouri, where their daughter was born in 1869. I found them through the 1870 Census, living in Cullen Township in Pulaski County, Missouri. As I looked at the listed household names, the last was a surprise: living with the Prathers was a young man by the name of O. George Miller. Keep in mind that my ancestor, Millie’s son, was known as George Washington Miller. The young man living with the Prathers was of about the right age for “my” George, but that pesky “O” didn’t fit. I wanted this George to be Millie’s (and “my”) George, but I could not, at that point, prove it.

My research thus again hit a brick wall. Would I ever discover the truth? My questions of “who, what and even where” concerning the mysterious and much-married Millie Miller still lingered. Now I had another question as well: Who was the George Miller living with P.P. Prather? I had discovered intriguing bits about my forebears, but with every discovery, it seemed, a new question or two had popped up. I was chest-deep in my family’s history and the water was still rising.

  

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[1] “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain, Chapters from my Autobiography (1907)

Director's Letter for October

By David Ware, director and state historian

As I write this, September is dwindling, and the weather has turned cool enough to be brisk in the mornings. We are on the eve of what is this year a low-key observance of a very big-key thing: Archives Month. Around the nation, October marks the time when archives, libraries and special collections find ways — generally low-keyed because that’s pretty much what we are — to modestly blow our own horns.

Here in Arkansas, we observe the month of October as Arkansas Archives Month, designated by a gubernatorial proclamation. This year’s proclamation, signed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, is in fact before me as I type this. In past years, we have marked Archives Month by issuing a handsome poster, sponsoring a symposium or lecture and setting up an exhibit in the Capitol Rotunda, showing off some of our portable documentary treasures and talking to visitors about what we are, “why we are,” what we take care of and what we can help researchers find in our collections.

This year, things are a little different: In common with many of our peers across the state and nation, we’ve de-emphasized in-person programming and installations while putting more time and resources into our virtual outreach channels — like this online newsletter, for instance. No poster this year, either — but we will have some choice graphics from our collections highlighted on our Facebook page to remedy this gap.

Our ways and means of interpreting our story to the public may have changed, but the aim remains the same: getting the word out about what we are and what we do. We’re often confused with libraries — which is understandable. Archives are sometimes seen as mysterious places full of obscure documents meant for internal use only, difficult to access and interesting only to historians. The popular understanding of records and archives by the public is not clear. Some people think that archives are a little spooky — which may make the month containing Halloween appropriate for celebrating and promoting them!

So, what are archives? Archives are collections of documents and other records created, received and maintained by organizations or persons because of legal obligations, the transaction of business or for other purposes—including cultural ones. The term “archives” also refers to the institutions, such as ours, that preserve such collections.

Archives are the places in which the “things that matter” live — and are kept safe. They preserve the vital evidence about the economic, political and social development of humankind. Archives are diverse, both in sources and formats: They can be created by almost any individual or group, including government agencies or departments, and exist in many forms: paper, film, magnetic or digital records. Archives preserve information for the long haul; that information comes in many different flavors! And in great quantities, too: dealing with the growing extent of collections is a challenge that faces archivists, records managers and librarians here and everywhere.

The Arkansas State Archives, established as the Arkansas History Commission back in 1905, is one of a number of institutions that preserve and make available the documentary matter of Arkansas. Hutchinson’s proclamation of September 1 recognizing Archives Month notes that: “numerous municipal, county, university and private archives … maintain valuable legal, administrative, fiscal and historical documents of our citizens’ everyday lives and activities.” The bottom line is this: We’re not alone in working to preserve what’s important, which is a good thing because there’s a lot of work to be done!

Through observing Arkansas Archives Month, we hope to:

1.         Promote awareness of the importance of records and archives, in order to make it understood that records and archives preserve the foundations of our rights and even our culture;

2.         Remind senior decision makers of the benefits of records management for good governance and development;

3.         Raise understanding, in both public and private sectors, of the necessity of — and work involved in — preserving archives for the long-term and providing access to them;

4.         Promote and interpret the unique, extraordinary and rare documents — the cool stuff, one might say — preserved in archival institutions.

So — Happy Arkansas Archives Month for 2020. We look forward to serving you, virtually or with a little luck, in-person, in months to come.

vvv

As we head into Arkansas Archives Month, a time to celebrate preservation, it is also a time to note the passing of one of our best-known archivists. Linda Ruth Pine, longtime head of Archives and Special Collections for UA-Little Rock, died in Little Rock on Sept. 16. Archivists and scholars around the state knew her far better than I and can doubtless tell far better stories about her — her sense of humor, her lack of patience with fools, her love for her rescued dogs, her solid professionalism and knowledge of her collection — so I will simply acknowledge my debt to her.

When I moved to Little Rock, my first job was as a part-time contract worker in the UALR Archives. Linda gave me a broad introduction to Arkansas history, particularly of the 20th century. While there I learned about Winthrop Rockefeller, Lum and Abner, the saga of the old Arkansas Gazette and much more. I made the acquaintance of Arkansas scholars, read widely and began to appreciate my new home state. From working for Linda, I went to a temporary historian’s position at the Arkansas Capitol that lasted nearly 19 years. Linda Pine started me off in the right direction; a lot of what I have been able to do was made possible by that good start. For this and for more, Linda, thanks.

October is Arkansas Archives Month

What does one look for in an archive? 

Historians and researchers use archives to find first-hand accounts and records, like early Arkansas statehood correspondence between lawyers, complete with land deeds, that show ownership of the land that would one day become Little Rock.

Genealogists rely on census records and military enlistment records to trace their heritage.

Archives even play a lesser known – but no less important – role in helping former National Guardsmen apply for military benefits or for family members to get funeral honors or gravestones for loved ones that served.

Archival work, including what goes on at the Arkansas State Archives and its two branches (the Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives and the Northeast Arkansas Regional Archives), plays many important roles in Arkansas. That’s why, by gubernatorial proclamation, Arkansans are encouraged to recognize the value of this work during Arkansas Archives Month this October.

“Arkansas Archives Month celebrates the significance of Arkansas’s historical records, illuminates the many ways these records enrich our lives, and recognizes those who maintain them,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in the proclamation. “I encourage my fellow citizens to discover the abundance of documentary treasures contained in our State’s archival repositories.”

The pandemic has limited capacity to host gatherings to mark the occasion, but the observation of Arkansas Archives Month can still help raise awareness of the importance of archives, the need for good records management and the work involved in the preservation and storage of the documents.

It’s also a good opportunity to bring attention to the rare and extraordinary documents preserved in archives. A case in point: The engrossed copies of Arkansas’s five (yes, five) state constitutions, each of which served as the fundamental legal document of its time (which, in the case of the last one, has stretched from 1874 to the present). Printed copies of the text of the 1874 Constitution abound, but when, several years ago, the State’s Code Revision Commission needed to confirm the precise wording of several of the Constitution’s passages, these would not serve: Commission staff examined faithful scans of the original, hand-lettered text.

“Archives are the places where the things that matter live and are kept safe,” said David Ware, state historian and director of the Arkansas State Archives. “They preserve testimony about the economic, social and political development of humankind — in short, our story. Or, rather, stories.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an archive as a “a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution or group of people.” These records are diverse both in sources and in formats. Examples range from the National Archives, housing the U.S. Constitution and other papers of state, to the Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives, which preserves Hempstead County court records and many other governmental, institutional and personal documents.

At the Collections Management Facility in Little Rock, the Arkansas State Archives preserves a collection for Camp Robinson, the home of the Arkansas National Guard. The collection contains National Guard enlistment records, service credits and other military paperwork beginning consistently from 1950 to 1974, with select files dating back to 1898.

On a regular basis, Archivist Lauren Jarvis retrieves these records to help patrons document their own military service or that of relatives; often, this is a crucial step in helping former servicemen prove that they qualify for insurance or medical benefits.

“We are usually just one stopping point, so we don’t always see the beginning and the end,” Jarvis said. “But, when we get these kinds of requests, we know that they are usually more time sensitive than other research requests because they are gathering documentation that meets an immediate need. We know that we are doing something that is important and essential.”

Historical records leave clues for solving the mystery of Millie

By Jane Wilkerson, archival assistant

One of the hardest things to explain to a researcher is that genealogy is something that takes time, and family lore may just be a myth. One tall tale in my own family is that of the mysterious Millie Miller, my third great-grandmother. For 30 years I have tried to separate fact from fiction and discover what had happened to her. So, for this month and in the next installment (or three) instead of talking about research tips in the abstract, I plan to take readers through a series of examples, using Millie as a case study, to show how varied documents can come together to tell a good story that is more than the sum of its parts.

Millie Miller was a survivor,
a businesswoman.

Millie came to my attention in the 1970s, when I was of school age. My oldest cousin had a project of interviewing and recording our family’s oldest members, to make sure their memories did not die with them. What he was told about Millie was “all tragedy:” Her husband died during the Civil War, and her children were split up and placed in relatives’ homes. That mass of unhappiness was about all I knew about Millie until later, when I learned that one of her granddaughters had tried to find out more about Millie and had … suddenly stopped. Confronted with this sudden change of course,  I became fascinated: I wondered what the reason behind my aunt’s hasty retreat could be. 

A partial answer had to wait until I was older, maybe considered “old enough” by my family. Apparently, Millie had gone to Oklahoma and had been a hospitality entrepreneur, of a sort. She ran a brothel and saloon. My aunt, horrified, had stopped her research cold, but my reaction was the opposite: Millie was a survivor, a businesswoman. This was a little like being descended from “Miss Kitty” of TV’s Gunsmoke!

It was 1999 before I had time to even begin to flesh out Millie’s story. The United States Census was where I started. In the 1860 census for Madison County, Arkansas, I found Millie with her husband George Washington Miller and their three children: Nancy, Susan and James. This could be verified from the information my cousin had gathered. 

From this known point, I began looking for a marriage license, in order to discover Millie’s maiden name. Since Millie and George’s oldest child, Nancy, was 5 years old in 1860, I estimated that they probably were married around 1854 or 1855. This date was problematic, though: Madison County records for that era were long destroyed. (This may have had something to do with the county having lost three courthouses to fire between 1863 and 1890.)

My next thought was to check Carroll County, where George had come from, but those records had suffered the same fate. (No fires are known to have destroyed the Carrol County courthouses, so the reason for these records’ disappearance is harder to pin down). Since both counties border Missouri, I spent some time on a north-of-the-border statewide search for a marriage license for the pair. It quickly became apparent, though, that a record of their marriage license no longer existed. 

Since I could not find Millie’s maiden name, my research shifted to her husband. Family lore states that George Washington Miller left one day to sign up to fight in the Civil War and was killed. His son, George Washington Miller Jr., was born in 1863, so it was likely that he left home around this time. But, which way did he go? Arkansas was a Confederate state, but Unionist sentiment was strong in the northern tier of counties, so he might well have chosen either side (or, as some did, both sides, albeit not at the same time). 

Without knowing whether he was Union or Confederate, I had to research both; with a name like George Washington Miller, the search proved to be a large task. The other factor that made it even more difficult is that the area of Arkansas they were living held not only both Union and Confederate sympathizers, but also several irregular militia groups—often styled “bushwackers” or “guerrillas.” George could have been involved in any of the above. 

My best confirmation of his affiliation would be from a pension record, but after checking both sides, there was no evidence that Millie had filed for or received one. Searching for their children proved just as difficult. George had several siblings, mostly brothers, in Carroll County. But, as with many other families then and even now, family names tended to be used concurrently and for generations: If the children were living with them, there was no way to distinguish their parentage. My research hit a brick wall and remained that way for some time to come.

In 2001, I began working at the Arkansas History Commission, today’s Arkansas State Archives. Part of my training was to learn what resources the agency offered for the patrons. The best way to become familiar with resources is to use them; so, my unanswered questions about Grandmother Millie came to mind. I returned to my own family quest, making use of the deep genealogical resources held by the Commission as part of my on the job training. 

The initial yield was still slim, but there were a few welcome discoveries. Tax records for Madison County, revealed George paid real estate tax until 1863. After that, there was no sign of Millie or any other family member paying on the property. I next asked myself the question, “If she didn’t have the money to pay taxes on their land, where else can I look?” 

The question led me to the venerable Kie Oldham Collection at the Archives. This collection consists of materials gathered for use in the book series War of the Rebellion. These documents were not selected for publication, but, luckily, the Arkansas State Archives received them as a donation. In the collection, I found a list of indigent families in Madison County. Millie and her children did not appear on the list. I considered this absence of information as revealing. For the time being, I had exhausted my search; Millie would have to be set aside for now. 

Next month, we will continue with Millie’s story and explore what finally led me to a breakthrough. Had she migrated into present-day Oklahoma? Was she, perhaps the “Miss Kitty” of the Permanent Indian Territory?

You will have to wait and see.

How a White Rapist Came To Be Regarded as Black: The Lynching of Andrew Springer

By Fatme Myuhtar-May, archival manager for Northeast Arkansas Regional Archives

Before I took the job as an archivist in the Northeast Arkansas Regional Archives (NEARA) in Powhatan, I was not intimately familiar with Lawrence County’s history. That is why I listened to every story from local patrons attentively and with great interest. It was from them that I heard about a location known as “Nigger Hill” in the small nearby town of Black Rock. A Kum & Go gas station now stands in that spot on Highway 63, where one takes the turn toward Powhatan. “This is where Black people used to live,” Jeanette Darris of Black Rock told me.¹ 

In fact, as Blake Perkins discovered in an article of the Arkansas Gazette,² the number of African Americans living in Black Rock in 1894 was about 300,³ which was a significant number for a town with a population of 1,000 in 1889, according to Glinda Hill Stuart.⁴

At that time, Black Rock was a newly minted railroad boom town. Many people of color came to the area for work in sawmills, factories and timber industries. The Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis Railroad Company built a line through the area. Timber abounded and could be floated down the Black River to distant mills and markets. The town of Black Rock – including its African American population – grew and flourished in the late 1800s. Today, the town has a population of about 600 with no Black residents.

So, where did the African Americans of Black Rock go, if they once had a community of their own? As Jeanette Darris heard it, the “whitecaps” – a term the Arkansas Gazette in 1894 used to describe Ku Klux Klan–like vigilantes – went door to door and posted notes to the effect of: “Leave or we will burn your house.” Because Jeanette did not elaborate on the exact time period, I presumed this happened in the 1920s when the KKK spread nationwide and left it at that.

One day, another patron and his daughter walked in, asking to use some archival materials. While I was photocopying the materials for them, conversation veered toward the Black community that once lived in Black Rock. What happened to them? Why did they leave? Did the KKK drive them away?

“No, that is not what happened,” the patron said. “What happened was that one of them raped Mrs. Montgomery and that was the reason why [white] people wanted them out.”

Indeed, a Mrs. W.R. Montgomery of Opposition, Arkansas, (a now defunct community in Sharp County), was raped in 1887, but a “white tramp,” as one local newspaper at the time described him, committed the outrage,⁶ not a Black man.

However, in 1889, only two years after the incident, Goodspeed’s Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas (relying on the largely unverified accounts of white Northeast Arkansas residents), defined Springer as “a negro,” without mentioning his name. Yet, there is no doubt that Goodspeed refers to Springer. The reference comprises a single sentence; the paragraph, which contains it, reads as follows:

We have a few legal and some illegal executions of criminals within the territory [Lawrence County]. During the early days of its existence, as originally constituted [originally, it encompassed much of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri], when courts and officers were few, the old settlers often took the administration of justice into their own hands, and for murder, rape, arson, and horse stealing, usually selected certain ones to run down the perpetrators, who, when caught, were brought back, were hung without the use of court or jury. For lesser crimes, offenders were tied, stripped and flogged. Hanging and flogging thus constituted the only modes of punishment inflicted by Judge Lynch and his associates. This manner of acknowledging crimes ceased generally when the Territory was divided into several counties, and courts and officers became more numerous. However, only a few years ago [two years earlier], a mob composed of individuals outside of the county, forcibly took from the jail in Powhatan, a negro, incarcerated therein for the charge of committing rape, and hanged him [emphasis added].⁷

Springer’s was the only case of lynching that was ever remembered or recorded in Lawrence County,⁸ and the second of only two individuals to be hanged in the county.⁹ In addition, it happened only two years prior to the Goodspeed’s publication. Thus, there is no doubt that both the archival patron’s and Goodspeed’s accounts reference Springer. I can, therefore, conclude with a fair amount of certainty that it is only in local lore (Goodspeed’s account included) and in much later accounts of his lynching (e.g., Richard Buckelew’s 1999 list of “Lynchings in Arkansas,” see Footnote 8)¹¹ that the racial identity of Andrew Springer became muddled: remarkably, from white he became Black.

Richard Buckelew’s List of Lynchings
 in Arkansas, 1860-1936

That Andrew Springer was white is beyond any doubt. That Andrew Springer came to be regarded as Black in the local account of history is also beyond dispute, as contemporaneous newspaper accounts and court records reveal. The radical transformation of his racial identity from white to Black is indicated by Goodspeed’s publication of a locally- generated narrative published in 1889, just two years after the event and the persistent nature of this transformation is indicated by its appearance in Buckalew’s “Lynchings in Arkansas.” Buckalew relied on two newspaper articles – the Little Rock-based Daily Gazette of May 22, 1887, and the Memphis Appeal of May 23, 1887 – to document Springer’s death—but did these identify him as Black?

A search for “Andrew Springer May 1886,” in Newspapers.com returned more than 430 hits. One of them was a Memphis Daily Appeal article from 23 May 1887.¹² This article, however, makes no mention of Springer’s racial identity. Furthermore, there is no match to any Little Rock Daily Gazette article from May 22, 1887. I found two articles regarding Springer published in the Daily Arkansas Gazette, but neither references his race, nor dates back to May 22 (instead, they are included in the May 21^s and May 29 issues, respectively).

Of all the news publications in Newspapers.com that report on the rape and Springer’s subsequent lynching between May 14 and May 29 of 1887,¹³ I studied in detail more than 100 of the top sources listed. Yet, not a single one of them describes him as a Black man. In fact, one of the articles published in the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from 26 May 1887 directly points to his being white in the very title: “Lynching a White Man: Murderers in Arkansas Forestall the Law and Kill a Prisoner.”¹⁴ The article – which is one of the more detailed ones – identifies him by name in its first sentence.

A“Lynching a White Man,”
Argus-Leader of May 26, 1887

 Moreover, a further search of Newspapers.com reveals hundreds (if not thousands) of cases of crime news from the same time period (many from the same year), where the perpetrator’s racial identity is clearly stated if he/she was Black, especially in the case of rape. On the other hand, only in rare instances is the race of criminals mentioned if they were white – the Argus-Leader article being one such example. Examples of the sensational crime-related headlines suggest that newspapers were not reluctant to identify Black in the headlines or within the first sentences of the text:

§ “A Villainous Negro Hanged to a Telegraph Pole [in Nebraska]”

§ “Short Walk Made of a Negro Fiend by a Georgia Mob”

§ “A Negro Ravisher Lynched [in Alabama]”

§ “A Negro Thief Taken from Jail and Brutally Beaten by a Mob [in Little Rock, Arkansas]”

§ “A Negro Rape Fiend Taken from Jail and Lynched [in Kentucky]”

§ “The Five Negro Fiends Who Murdered Young Good Lynched at Yorktown [South Carolina]”

§ “A Colored Cook Cooked [for shooting at a waitress in Colorado who lived]”

§ A North Carolina Lynching [of a ‘Burly Negro’]”

Whereas labels, such as “fiend”, “brute” and/or “rapist,” among others, were sometimes used in reference to white criminals (including to describe Springer on a handful of occasions¹⁵), they were applied to Blacks for any crime with almost no exclusion. The use of such labels was especially abundant in the case of rape – a crime regarded as particularly abhorrent and committed by individuals that were “less than human.”

Rape was a crime so widely ascribed to Black males in that time period and subsequently – for which the ultimate punishment was extrajudicial lynching (also known as mob law or Judge Lynch) – that a number of newspapers, including the Missouri-based Douglass County Herald from the turn of the 20th century, termed it a “Negro Problem.” “Every colored man should realize that the worst enemy of his race is the negro criminal, and above all the negro criminal who commits the dreadful crime of rape,” stated the Herald from Dec. 6, 1906. The article continued: “The greatest existing cause for mob law is the perpetration by the Blacks of the crime of rape, a crime which … [is] even worse that of murder [emphasis added].”

On one hand, the article in question argues in favor of access to good public education for “negroes” in order to make them good citizens, alongside white Americans. On the other hand, the language of the article is one of agreement with the premise of the “negro criminal” – particularly the “negro rapist” – and its proposed solution is to reform the “negro criminal” through education. In fact, the “negro rapist” assumption was so commonplace that descriptions, such as “she was approached by a burly negro … and she saw at once the furious passion that blazed in the brute’s eyes,”¹⁶ were the norm rather than the exception.

It is not surprising, then, that the St. Louis Globe-Democrat from June 4, 1892, echoing the reality of widespread lynching of Blacks, especially in the South and especially for the alleged crime of rape, stated, “Negro lynching for rape is not determined by latitude. New York has just done this, and so would Massachusetts or Vermont under the same circumstances.”¹⁷

Notions of Black criminality and the “negro rapist” only intensified by the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan’s influence spilled out of the South and spread throughout the United States. The use of violence and murder – especially lynching – against African Americans, continued to grow. Whereas the first Klan emerged in the South during the late 1860s in response to the emancipation of slaves following the Civil War and the political enfranchisement of Black males, it was quickly suppressed by the federal authorities.¹⁸ Yet, feelings of resentment continued to linger under the surface in the South.

It was therefore not surprising that the second Klan emerged in Georgia in 1915, to a large extent fueled by D.W. Griffith's 1915 feature film The Birth of a Nation, which was seen across the United States. In the 1920s, therefore, the “Black rapist” and the “Black criminality” stereotypes were reaffirmed and spread nationwide. Even though the Klan’s wanton engagement in violence and murder of Blacks, Jews, immigrants and even women (including a high-profile rape and murder trial against D.C. Stephenson, the powerful grand dragon of the Indiana Klan¹⁹) generated a large media and societal backlash, leading to its demise by the late 1920s, KKK-inspired ideology did not die out.²⁰

Proof of that can be seen in the “third Klan’s” emergence after 1950s, in opposition to the Civil Rights movement, although its activities were localized and largely isolated. To this day, however, white supremacist ideology remains firmly entrenched in segments of American society, and notions of Black criminality remain viable. Within this context then, the muddling of Andrew Springer’s identity in Lawrence County’s lore, as well as the persistent belief that he was Black, becomes more understandable, if still unjustified.

Next month, NEARA will start piecing together the story of Andrew Springer's crime and lynching in Lawrence County using NEARA's vast collection of documents and database availability.
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[1] Unrecorded conversation with Jeanette Darris of Black Rock, Powhatan, Lawrence County, 2019.

[2] Arkansas Gazette, “Whitecaps: A Labor Race War Seems Imminent in Lawrence County,” Arkansas Gazette, January 17, 1894, 2.

[3] According to Blake Perkins, “this is the only known statistic that offers any insight into the size of the black population in the first sixteen years of the city’s existence [after 1894, when Black Rock was incorporated].” See Blake Perkins, “Race Relations in Western Lawrence County, Arkansas,” Southeast Missouri State University Press, not dated, http://www.semopress.com/race-relations-in-western-lawrence-county-arkansas/, accessed September 9, 2019.

[4] Glynda Hill Stuart, “History of Black Rock,” in Mother of Counties: Lawrence County, Arkansas – History and Families, 1815-2001 (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company, 2001), 24.

[5] I omit the names on purpose.

[6] Sharp County Record, May 18, 1887. It was Vesta Smith of Back Rock who discovered the article and provided me with a printed microfilm copy of it. However, I have been unable to independently locate it in Newspapers.com or on microfilm yet.

[7] Goodspeed, Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889), 766.

[8] See Richard Buckelew, Appendix I: Lynchings in Arkansas: A Comprehensive Listing, in “Racial Violence in Arkansas: Lynchings and Mob Rule, 1860-1930/” (Ph.D. diss, University of Arkansas, 1999), 223-254. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/35747171_Racial_violence_in_Arkansas_lynchings_and_mob_rule_1860-1930, accessed September 18, 2019

[9] Steven Saunders, interview by Fatme Myuhtar-May taken in Powhatan, AR, May 5, 2019. Audio 58:40.

[10] Ibid.

[11] On p. 231 of his list, Buckelew also identifies Springer as black (see Footnote 8).

[12] Last searched September 17, 2019.

[13] A search of Newspapers.com returned 435 hits, the overwhelming majority of which do reflect the case of Andrew Springer.

[14] Argus-Leader. “Lynching a White Man: Murderers in Arkansas Forestall the Law and Kill a Prisoner.” Argus-Leader, 26 May 1887, 1, https://www.newspapers.com/image/228995087/?terms=Andrew%2BSpringer%2BPowhatan, accessed September 17, 2019.

[15] Memphis Avalanche, for example, called him “an inhuman fiend” in an article about the crime. See “An Inhuman Fiend: Mrs. Montgomery Outraged during Her Husband’s Absence,” Memphis Avalanche, 18 May 1887, Newspapers.com, accessed August 24, 2019.

[16] St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 Aug 1887, 1, Newspapers.com, accessed August 24, 2019.

[17] St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 4 June 1892, 4, Newspapers.com, accessed August 24, 2019.

[18] See Rory McVeigh, The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), passim; Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, “The Great Mongrel Military Despotism: The First Ku Klux Klan and the Anti-Chinese Crusade,” in Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 54-69.

[19] See Famous Trials, “D.C. Stephenson Trial (1925),” UMKC School of Law, https://www.famous-trials.com/stephenson, accessed September 19, 2019.

[20] See Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, “100 Percent American: World War I-Era Repression and the Second Ku Klux Klan,” in Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press, 2000), 85-103; Charles Quarles, “1915—A New Image,” in The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Anti-Semitic Organizations: A History and Analysis, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1999), 53-76.