USA > Arkansas > Historical review of Arkansas : its commerce, industry and modern affairs > Part 13
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"Bob" Malone, as he to whom this sketch is dedicated is gener- ally known, passed his boyhood and youth in Cross county, Arkansas, and he received his early educational training in the public schools of that place. He began life as a merchant's clerk at Forest City, Arkansas, and subsequently he went to Wittsburg, where he served for three years in the capacity of postmaster, eventually coming to Jonesboro in 1883. As a citizen of Jonesboro Mr. Malone has devoted his attention to the fire-insurance business and to handling and deal-
ing in real estate. As an indication of the representative character of his insurance business he writes for seventeen of the most able and substantial companies doing business in the United States and is associated with the American Trust Company of Jonesboro in this line. He is a member of the Association of Local Insurance Agents of Arkansas, a body which meets annually for mutual aid in the exchange of ideas of mutual interest and benefit, and in 1909 was president of the association.
Mr. Malone was married first at Wittsburg, Arkansas, the maiden name of his wife having been Florence A. McFerrin, and the cere- mony having been performed on the 17th of December, 1879. Mrs. Malone was summoned to the life eternal in 1891, at which time she was survived by four children, namely, Lillian, who is the wife of W. P. Klapp, a leading druggist of Jonesboro: Jamie, of Forest City, Arkansas: Mary, who is now Mrs. Gus Nash, of Jonesboro; and Miss Blanche, a student in college. On the 12th of October, 1893, was sol- emnized the marriage of Mr. Malone to Miss Sarah E. Ebbert, a
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daughter of S. E. Ebbert, of St. Francis county, Arkansas, and this union has been prolific of two children-Mattie and Elizabeth.
In the earlier years of his life Mr. Malone was an active factor in the municipal affairs of Jonesboro. He served as city recorder, joined his Democratie brethren in promoting the welfare of his party and was often a delegate to state and other Democratie conventions. In a fraternal way he is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, is a Knight of Pythias, holds a poliey in the Woodmen of the World and in the Knights and Ladies of Honor. In connection with his religious faith he has ever been a Methodist and for twenty- five years has been an officer of the congregation in Jonesboro, fre- quently representing the same in the annual conference of the denom- ination ; he was secretary of the White River conference for a number of years. When the general conference of the church was held at Baltimore, Maryland, he was sent by the White River department to represent it at the National meeting and he took a prominent part in the deliberations of that great spiritual body. In every manner pos- sible Mr. Malone has been a loyal and true citizen, doing all in his power to advance the general welfare of the community in which he maintains his home. He is a man of great benevolence and broad human sympathy-a man whose charity knows only the bounds of his opportunity.
MILLARD H. RHODES is the senior member of the retail department and jobbing establishment of Rhodes-MeCain Company of Jonesboro, and for nearly a decade he has been a factor in the commercial life of the city. He does not possess the distinction of Arkansas nativity or of pioneer association with the commonwealth, coming to it as he did at the opening of the present century, but his lively interest in the varied affairs that go to make up an orderly and advancing community mark him as thoroughly an integral part of its complex fabrie as though he possessed all the royal attributes.
Orange county, New York, is the native home of Millard H. Rhodes, his birth having oeeurred on a farm near Middletown, March 11. 1875. The same house that sheltered him as a child performed a like service for his father, John Rhodes, born twenty-three years be- fore. The emigrant ancestor was the great-grandfather of Millard H .. and he settled on the line of Sullivan and Orange counties in the early years of the nineteenth century. He passed his life as a farmer, as did his son, Mathias, the grandfather of the subject.
John Rhodes passed his life as a stone dealer in Middletown and was summoned to the Great Beyond in September. 1910. His wife, whose maiden name was Carrie Hummell, was a daughter of a Mr. ITmmmell of Newhurg, New York, and of their union Millard is the eldest child. Irvin S. is a merchant of Franklin, New York; Inez is the wife of Albert Greene, of Middletown : and Floyd M., the youngest. is his father's snecessor in business and is a resident of New York City.
Millard IT. Rhodes had the pleasant fortune of living in his youth amid rural surroundings and his literary training came from the country public schools. He became a wage earner at the age of fifteen years as an employe of George B. Adams, who was a phenom- enally successful merehant in Middletown, and in the coneern of this able financier. young Rhodes obtained ideas which went far toward making him a success when he came to establish and conduet a business of his own. After a few years he entered the store of a Mr. Tompkins
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of the same city and in his employ he remained until 1902, when he cast his lot with the west and made Arkansas his home.
It was in the year 1902 that Mr. Rhodes became a resident of Jonesboro. He foresaw the possibilities of a progressive enterprise here and associated himself with a retail business of small propor- tions, which was conducted as the Jordan Dry Goods Company, he himself being the head of the firm. In January, 1909, the firm pur- chased the Turner, Elrod & McCain store. The two houses were com- hined and the name was changed to the Rhodes-McCain Company, incorporated for twenty-five thousand dollars. This company does a vast retail business and carries the name of the Rhodes-MeCain Com- pany, Cash Department Store, at 412, 414 and 416 Main street. The house has a frontage of seventy-five feet; is ninety feet deep and two stories high, and the thrifty business of the concern leaves none of this space unutilized. Mr. Rhodes is secretary-treasurer and manager and he can look upon the large and constantly growing business as the outgrowth of the modest retail business he inaugurated less than ten years ago.
On January 1, 1901, Mr. Rhodes was married in Middletown, New York, his wife being Miss Florence Case, daughter of Ira L. Case, a highly respected and influential business man and citizen of that place, among whose distinctions was that of holding high place in Masonic cireles. The mother's maiden name was Belle G. Taylor. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes has been blessed by the birth of two daughters - Edith and Eleanor.
Mr. Rhodes' interest in the commercial status of Jonesboro is shown by his membership in the Retail Merchants' Association, of which he was made president in 1910, and by his membership in the Business Men's Club, in which he is a director. His fraternal affilia- tion is with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He is identified with the best eauses promulgated in the city, being a director of the Young Men's Christian Association and a deacon in the First Presbyterian church.
Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes are favorites in the best social life of the city and their home is one of its most hospitable and attractive abodes.
GUSTAV A. TRINLER is secretary and office manager of the Amer- ican Handle Company at Jonesboro, which is one of the chief enter- prises of the city and one of those industries in whose promotion he was concerned. He came to Arkansas in 1904 and in the ensuing decade has been an active factor in the success of the plant, possessing those fine executive and initiative gifts which seem to be the special heritage of the German. He was born in the Schwartzwald, Baden, Germany, July 21, 1862, and in 1875 he accompanied his parents to the United States. The family home was established at New Albany, Indiana, where young Gustav grew to manhood. IIis father was Mar- tin Trinler, a tinsmith, who died in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1894. at the age of sixty-nine years; and his mother, whose maiden name was Barbara Goller, survives and is a resident of Louisville, Kentucky. The children of the family were as follows: Albert, of Rutherford, New York; Frederica, wife of Lewis Kendall, of Valley Station, Kentucky ; Amelia, who passed away unmarried; the subject; and Louisa, who married Arthur Smith and is a resident of Louisville.
Gustav A. Trinler acquired all his school training in the exeellent schools of the Fatherland and immediately upon reaching the United States he began work, learning the language of his new country by
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constant contact with it. His first work was as a weigher of iron in a rolling mill in New Albany, and proving faithful and efficient in small things he was given more and more to do, working his way towards the top as an employe and finally being made superintendent of a rolling mill at Alexandria, Indiana. Having become expert in handling steel he was selected by the Union Steel Company to repre- sent it in Great Britain, with the idea of showing the Welsh how to handle American steel. After a year and a month abroad he returned home and became superintendent of the Piqua, Ohio, works of the American Sheet Steel Company, from which he eventually severed his association to come to Arkansas.
While in charge of the rolling mill at Alexandria he had under him two young Irishmen who were destined to engage with him in an important new enterprise diametrically different from the iron business in which they were engaged. These young men were James Devonre and M. P. Welsh. This trio of mechanics, with J. L. Donahoo, decided to engage in the handle business in Arkansas and formed the American Handle Company, which did business for a time as a part- nership. Their plant was erected in 1900 in Jonesboro and in 1904 it was incorporated for thirty thousand dollars. with Mr. Donahoo, as president ; Mr. Welsh, as vice-president; and Mr. Trinler, as secretary. When the responsibility of operation was divided, Mr. Donahoo as- sumed charge of operations in the field, buying the timber and keeping the mill supplied with raw product; Mr. Welsh took charge of the operation of the mill in all of its details; and Mr. Trinler became the office man, responsible for the sales, collections and general financial matters of the company.
The American Handle Company has a capacity of three hundred and fifty dozen finished handles in ten hours, gives labor to some forty men in the forest and sixty in the factory, and many cords of hickory are brought hither from various sources other than the regular timber gangs of the company. The industry has met with gratifying success and has proved greatly valuable in the development and prosperity of this particular section.
Mr. Trinler was married in New Albany, Indiana, in the month of January, 1884, to Miss Matilda Gadient, a danghter of John Gadient, who came to this country from Switzerland and came to be a prosper- ous merchant tailor. No children have been born to this union.
Mr. Trinler is a director of the First National Bank of Jonesboro. Fraternally he is a Master and a Chapter Mason and affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. In national polities he gives hand and heart to the men and measures of the Republican party, but upon local questions he is independent, giving the better man and the better measure high place above mere partisanship.
RUFUS L. COLLINS. The present able and popular incumbent of the office of county and probate clerk of Craighead county, Arkansas. is widely and favorably known as a public official, and as a citizen he is deeply and sincerely interested in community affairs, his intrinsic loyalty and public spirit making him a co-operant factor in all projects advanced for the well being of Jonesboro and the county and state at large.
Rufus L. Collins was born in Craighead county, one mile and a half distant from the city of Jonesboro, the date of his nativity being the 20th of April, 1860. His father, Martin Collins, was born in Spar- tansburg, South Carolina, whence he immigrated to Arkansas about the
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year 1854. He was married en route to Eliza Loftus, and they became the parents of the following children: Memory Collins, of Wolcott, Arkansas; Rufus L., of this notice; Annie, who married John W. Sharp and who died, leaving a family of six children; and Albert M., of Jonesboro, who owns the pioneer homestead of the family. After his arrival in Arkansas Martin Collins settled in Craighead county, where during the Civil war he was engaged in freighting goods into the county. He was summoned to the life eternal on the 9th of Au- gust, 1864, and his cherished and devoted wife long survived him.
The boyhood, youth and early manhood of Rufus L. Collins were passed amid humble, rural surroundings. He was a child of but four years of age at the time of his father's death and was reared to adult age by a devoted mother, who had to work hard and make many sacri- fices in order to keep her little brood together and to keep the wolf from the door. The children were educated in the schools of the locality and period, trudging long distances to the primitive school houses and then receiving but meager instruction. After he had at- tained to years of maturity Mr. Collins, of this review, turned attention to the great basic industry of agriculture, continuing to be identified with that line of enterprise until the loss of his right leg compelled him to seek some less strenuous labor. This sad loss was the result of an accident with a horse in 1883. In the fall of 1885 Mr. Collins en- tered local politics as candidate for the office of tax assessor of Craig- head county. He was elected to this office in the ensuing campaign but upon assuming the responsibilities thereof he discovered his lack of education and for the ensuing several months he applied himself vigorously to text books and reading, with the result that he gained a firm foundation for future offices of public trust and responsibility. He was incumbent of the office of tax assessor for a period of six years and from 1892 to 1896 he was engaged in farming and stock dealing. Having made the race for the office of sheriff in 1894, with- out success, he was ambitious still to fill that office, and in 1896 again hecame candidate for it. In the latter year he was successful at the polls and in 1898 he was elected as his own successor therein. For a few years following 1900 he was successfully engaged in farming and stock-raising and he made the race for county treasurer, coming within sixty-four votes of being nominated. In 1908 he became a candidate for the office of county clerk against several competitors, was nom- inated and elected as the successor of W. B. Armstrong. In 1910 he was renominated and re-elected to the office of county and probate clerk, in which he is serving with the utmost efficiency at the present time.
During his residence in Jonesboro Mr. Collins has served the city as a member of the board of aldermen and as a member of the board of education. He has acquired very extensive and valnable interests in farming property in this section of the state, owning a large tract of land in the St. Francis river bottom and another in the vicinity of Jonesboro. As a business man and official Mr. Collins is everywhere admired and respected. He is a man of sterling integ- rity and broad information, is kind and affable in all the relations of life, and is deeply admired and respected by all with whom he has come in contact.
On the 6th of October, 1880, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Collins to Miss Mattie A. Thomas, who was born and reared in Craighead county and who is a daughter of Isaac Thomas. Mr. Thomas was a gallant and faithful Confederate soldier who sacrificed
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his life for the cause of his favorite Southland, his death having oc- curred on the 1st of January, 1862. Mr. and Mrs. Collins became the parents of the following children : Oney B., who is the wife of Blow Grover, of Los Angeles, California; John A., deputy clerk under his father; Eli W., of Kankakee, Illinois; Amber B., who is Mrs. Fred Wilhelm, of Memphis, Tennessee; and Misses Mattie and Bertha F., Ollie G. and Glenn F., twins, and Julia May, all of whom are at the parental home." In their religious faith the Collins family are devout members of the Baptist church, in the different departments of whose work they are most zealous factors.
JEFFREY A. HOUGHTON, postmaster of Jonesboro, is a native of Cross county, Arkansas, born December 5, 1868, a son of Jeffrey A. Iloughton, an ante-bellum settler of the state and a native of Alabama. The Houghton lineage shows the family to have been among the early Colonial ones of Massachusetts Bay, its immigrant aneestor having arrived on American soil only about a third of a century following the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Roek. John Houghton, of Lan- caster, England, came to Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1653, and died there in 1684, and the most ancient of the headstones in the cemetery of that old New England town bears his honored name. We know that his wife's Christian name was Beatrice and that their sons were Benjamin, William, Robert and John, Jr. The last, born just before the family departed for "the land of promise," is said to have pos- sessed the accomplishment rather rare in those days of being a fine penman. He became a leading man in his region, was for fourteen years a delegate to the General Court and for many years he seems to have been the only magistrate of his town, while his tenure of the office of town clerk covered a period of no less than forty years. Ile was a skilled conveyancer in the transferring of title by deed and otherwise and the land upon which the third church was erected in 1706 was donated by him. He was instrumental in the removal of the meeting houses from their former locations to the old common. He lost his sight before his death, on February 3, 1737, when past seventy- six years of age, and he was buried in the cemetery on the old com- mon. This epitaph is chiseled upon his headstone: "Here lies buried the body of John Houghton Esquire. As you are so were we. As we are so will you be. Who died February ye 3 anno dom. 1736-7 and in the 87th year of his age."
Jacob Houghton, the son of John, was born February 17. 1672; probably married Rebecca Whiteomb: and Benjamin Houghton, their son, married Ruth Wheelock, and the issue of their union were as follows: Justice John, born July 20, 1720; Ezra, born July 29, 1722; Abijah, born September 23, 1723: Relief, born October 23, 1726: Elijah, born June 16, 1728. The latter was a "minute man" of the Revolu- tionary period and a private in Colonel Benjamin Houghton's Com- pany. Colonel John Whitcomb's Regiment, which marched on the alarm of Paul Revere, April 19, 1775. to Cambridge. He was also a private in Colonel Asa Whitcomb's regiment and Captain Houghton's com- pany: was enlisted April 27. 1775. and mustered out on August 1, following. This interesting record is shown in Volume VIII, of the Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolution. Following Elijah came Parnee Honghton, born April 14, 1730: Philemon, born June 3, 1731: Nehemiah, born October 1, 1732; Ruth, born April 3. 1734; Lemmal. born September 25, 1735; and Benjamin, born May 10, 1740.
Elijah Houghton married Mary Allen October 3, 1764, at Lancas-
n.G. Maur
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ter, Massachusetts. Their children were Oliver, born January 19, 1765; Elijah, born January 11, 1767; Maverick, born September 22, 1768; Lockheart, born January 7, 1771: Sparhawk, born May 23, 1773; and Sophia, born June 15, 1775. Captain Houghton, the father, died July 7, 1810, and his wife passed away May 22, 1818.
Oliver Houghton married Abigail Hovey and died September 19, 1836, while his widow lived until February 4 of the next year. Their children were Emeline, born July 23, 1792; Eliza, born May 22, 1794; Jeffrey Atherton, born April 26, 1796; Edmund Winchester, born May 10, 1798; and Oliver, born November 26, 1806. The eldest son, Jeffrey A., married, reared a family and died at sea, and among his children was Jeffrey A., father of him whose name inaugurates this review, and who is the third to bear the name.
Jeffrey A. Houghton was born in the '20s of the nineteenth cen- tury ; came to Arkansas as a young man, and married Miss Laura Casey. She was a daughter of a citizen of Charleston, South Caro- lina, the hub of the secession activities before the Civil war. Her father was a chaplain in the Confederate army. In early life the subject's father engaged as a merehant at Powhatan, Arkansas, and when the Civil war came on he gave his support to the Union cause as a soldier. After the war he followed farming and he removed to Cross county, Arkansas, where he passed away in 1876. His surviving children were Henry Hovey, ex-postmaster of Jonesboro, Arkansas, and a prominent business man of the city; Jeffrey Atherton, subject of this review; and Bunyan C., of Senath, Missouri.
Jeffrey A. Houghton, III, received his education in the public schools, which he attended in Cross, Ponisett and Craighead counties. He left the farm at fourteen and worked in a printing office at Har- risburg for a short period, then had experience in a drug store there for a short time, coming thence to Jonesboro, where he elerked in a book and stationery business. Leaving this he became an aid to his brother in the Jonesboro postoffice until the second Cleveland adminis- tration, and then found himself out in the "cold, cold world" with the other Republicans. He secured a position as clerk in the office of the Cotton Belt Railroad Company at Jonesboro and there remained until President MeKinley reappointed his brother postmaster, when he became again an office deputy and has ever sinee remained in the postal service. In 1906 he was appointed postmaster himself and was reappointed in 1910.
This branch of the Houghton family has ever been affiliated with the Republican party. Jeffrey A. has served his party as county treas- urer for many years, has a wide aequaintanee among the leaders of the party and has sat in state conventions and other gatherings where representatives have deliberated upon the affairs of the party.
On December 11, 1909, Mr. Houghton was united in marriage to Miss Aliee Louise Pileher, a daughter of Mrs. L. A. Pilcher, formerly of St. Louis, Missouri. Laura Louise is the issne of their marriage.
Fraternally Mr. Houghton is an Elk and a Master Mason. In addition to his public office he is a member of the mercantile firm of Langford & Houghton of Jonesboro. He is a director of the Young Men's Christian Association and is a deaeon in the Christian churel.
WILLIAM G. MAURICE. A progressive, liberal and essentially repre- sentative citizen, who has shown himself deeply appreciative of the manifold attractions and resources of the state of Arkansas and who has done much to further the material and eivie advancement of his
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home city of Hot Springs to its present status as one of the great health and pleasure resorts of the world, Mr. Maurice is specially en- titled to recognition in this publication. As a banker, capitalist and man of affairs he is one of the leading citizens of Hot Springs, and he has been a potent factor in the development of its magnificent resources as a watering place and health resort.
William G. Maurice was born in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, on the 12th of February, 1859, and is a son of Captain Charles E. and Helen (Camp) Maurice. Captain Charles E. Maurice was born in the historie old city of Richmond, Virginia, and he died at his home in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on the 18th of September, 1904. He was a notable character and his long life was filled with productive activity in con- nection with affairs of broad scope and importance. The lineage of the Maurice family is traced back to distinguished French origin, and the family name has been for many generations prominently identified with the wine industry at Bordeaux, France, where in that city one of the oldest and most important wine establishments devoted to the export trade is that conducted by representatives of the Maurice family and under the family name. The father of Captain Maurice came from Bordeaux to America in the early part of the nineteenth century, and for several years he was one of the leading architects in the city of New York. In 1839 the family removed to Jamestown, Chautauqua county, New York, where Captain Maurice was reared to maturity and received good educational advantages. Upon attaining to his legal majority he became a member of the firm of Dascum, Allen & Company, of Jamestown, but his alert mentality, broad outlook and vigorous enthu- siasm did not permit him long to confine himself to the simpler lines of enterprise. He had the prescience to realize the golden opportunities of the west, and in 1854 or 1855 he established his residence in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, where he became associated with the firm of Sanger, Camp & Company, known as the largest and most important firm of rail- road contractors in the United States during the '50s, '60s and early '70s. This firm built the old Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, the North Missouri Railroad (now a part of the Wabash system), the Texas & New Orleans Railroad and several other lines that constituted the foundations of great railroad systems of the middle west. It was through his association with this concern that Captain Maurice met and eventually married Miss Helen Camp, who was a daughter of George T. Camp, a member of the firm. It may be noted also that about the same time a daughter of General Sanger, senior member of the firm, married George M. Pullman, of Chicago, who became the head of the great Pullman Car Manufacturing Company and the founder of the industrial city that bears his name; Mrs. Pullman still resides in Chicago.
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