July 8

John Henry Arnold was born 08 July 1860

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

Here is what Annie wrote:

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.  

My Father married at the age of 19 or 18 years, to Adaline 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. 

PHOTO L-R: Aunt Peggy, George, Adaline holding Etta, Annie standing behind John, Henry holding Marlie

PHOTO L-R: Marlie, John, Henry, Annie, Adaline, Ettie

PHOTO L-R: Marlie, John, Henry, Adaline, Annie, Ettie

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.