July 08

Happy Birthday to

John Henry Arnold 1869-1909

John Henry Arnold was my great-great-grandfather, the father of my great-grandmother Annie Arnold Hicks.

John Henry was raised by an aunt and uncle, Peggy and George Bullard.

George and Peggy were brother and sister. Their sister Emma was John Henry's mother.

Here is what Annie wrote about her father:

   Grandmother’s name before marriage was Emma Bullard. She married a man by the name of Arnold. They had one child, Henry (my father). They didn’t live together but three or four years. They had trouble because he wanted to move from Missouri to Texas (or at least that’s what set off the separation), with his folks and she wouldn’t move, but he went ahead and moved without her and in a little while he came back and wanted her to take him back but she wouldn’t. Then in a year or two she married a man by the name of Alex McReynolds. They had one boy and twin girls and they had trouble and he took the girls and left, and they never heard from him any more. But about the time she married the second time, her brother and sister (neither one married) took my Dad - just a small boy about maybe 2 years old, and set up housekeeping and raised him. Their names were George Bullard and Margaret Bullard (Peggy). Uncle George and Aunt Peggy was always exactly like my Grandpa and Grandma. After they got my Dad about raised, Uncle George married Josie Tamsett, an aunt of Amy Tamsett that John Carter married. Then a little later, Aunt Peggy married Alex Williams, a very strange character. Aunt Peggy said she never could get acquainted with him or understand his actions. Lots of nights he would get up in the night and sit in the door with his gun just like he was expecting a murderer, but in just a few years he was walking home across an old field where there was some dead trees and one of them fell on him and killed him. Just the day before that, he had a snuff box packed full of $20 gold pieces and that would be a lot of money for them times. He evidently had hid that money for not a penny could be found (about 1897). In those days gold pieces were in common circulation. They got the idea that he bored a hole in a tree and put the box of money in the hole and put a peg in on it, but they had no idea which tree nor for sure that he did that, so there wasn’t any chance to find the money. This all took place in Missouri around Thayer. 

   My Father was grown and married before Aunt Peggy married. My Father married at the age of 19 or 18 years, to Adeline Carter (my mother). She was seven months older than him. I am not sure how old they were - they probably were not more than 18 years old. I know they were young when they married in Missouri around Thayer. Dad was born around McCrory, Arkansas, but the family moved to Missouri while he was a baby. My Dad was raised in Illinois. My parents had five children, three boys and 2 girls. George was the oldest child. I was next, John was the third, then we moved from Missouri to Arkansas. Then Marlie was born, then Ettie was the last one - born in 1900. 

   When my parents came to Arkansas they homesteaded a piece of land and built a log house on it and lived on it for five or six years, and sold it and bought another farm. Then our house burned. We lost everything we had almost. Then we had to get another place so we bought 40 acres for $100. A fair price for land in those days. My Father was a sorghum maker so he paid for the farm with sorghum molasses. A fifty-gallon barrel or two of them every year at about 20 cents a gallon, a fair price for sorghum in those days. That was in about 1906. We lived on that place a few years and then we traded that place and a wagon and team of mules for 160 acres of land with a good house on it. That was about the best place anywhere around there. After living there three or four years, my Father died at the age of 39 years. The doctor said he had pleurisy. That is water around the lungs. In a few years, Ma divided the place among the children, forty acres apiece for all the children except me. She gave me a cow. I preferred the cow instead of splitting four forties into five blocks. 

Photo: Henry and Adaline Arnold

Photo: Annie Arnold Hicks and cow