Grandpa Arnold, by Cleffie Hicks Burford
John Henry Arnold
I want to tell a little story about my Grandpa Arnold, that I have heard my mother tell several times during my life. My grandpa was born in McCrory, Arkansas in White County, and apparently the woman who gave birth to him was married to a man named Arnold. But we don’t know what his first name was, and don’t know anything else about him. That was way back before my time.
But the woman who gave birth to my grandpa was Emma Bullard, and I don’t know if she stayed married to her husband, or if they separated or what. She had family up in the hills around Cleburne County, and she sent word to her brother George Bullard that she wanted him to come and get her little boy and take him home with him and raise him for her. I don’t know what had happened to her marriage, if anything. But it seems strange that she’d do that if everything was alright.
Anyway, he went down there on horseback, and brought that little boy back here in the hills, and one of his sisters helped him raise him. Her name was Margaret Bullard. They had set up housekeeping just especially to raise that boy. But of course, later on then there was another boy or two that they raised, but this one was the only one that was anything to our family.
I have wondered, I’ve just pictured him in my mind a lot of times bringing that child back up here on horseback. And it must be about 50 miles, one way. He’d have to spend a night or two on the road, just riding horseback. I just wonder how he managed that. And to just picture that little child, and him trying to get along with it that far, on horseback. And feeding it too. That’s another difficult thing. Back then there weren’t as many places to eat -- restaurants and things to stop in, as there are now. I don’t know, but anyway they made it and he lived to a long enough life -- a normal lifetime and raised a big family.
I don’t know if anybody hardly knows about that or not, but my mother has told that. Several times, I’ve heard her tell that story about that and so, I know that it’s true or she wouldn’t have told it.
Margaret "Peggy" Bullard and her brother George Bullard