USA > Arkansas > Historical review of Arkansas : its commerce, industry and modern affairs > Part 28
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The work of Rev. Mr. Sikes as a churchman was very effective among his soldier comrades. Whenever camp was pitched he held prayer meetings, and whenever a long stop was made in any place preparations were made for holding revival meetings; the whole command was sup- plied with Testaments and Bibles, and a systematic campaign for Christ was carried on, more especially was this true in Meridian, Mississippi, where winter quarters were maintained.
Since the war Mr. Sikes has given much of his life to the spreading of the gospel. He was ordained a Baptist minister as a member of the Baptist church by Reverends Dunigan, Williams and Heath, and only since the decline of his physical strength has he given up preaching. For a short time after the war he was deputy clerk of Benton county, and was afterwards elected clerk, entering the office as deputy in December, 1865, and retiring from it when, in 1868, the period of reconstruction displaced him. He had previously prepared himself for the law, and was actively engaged in the practice of his profession and in farming until 1880, when he took an overland trip to Colorado for the benefit of his health. Upon recovering his usual physical vigor, he resumed his law business and his agricultural labors. Mr. Sikes has found fox hunting his chief means of pleasure and recreation. As a boy this sport charmed him, and his periodic runs of the little silver
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and the common red foxes have added not a little to the maintenance of his apparent vigor of mind and body.
Ever a stanch Democrat in politics, Mr. Sikes is a follower of Bryan, but he has never had ambitions for public service to gratify. On December 25, 1855, Mr. Sikes was married, at Pea Ridge, Ar- kansas, to Almyra Lee, who was born in Missouri, where her father, John W. Lee, settled on migrating from Kentucky, his native state. Mrs. Sikes passed to the higher life April 8, 1898. Her only child to reach years of maturity was a daughter, named Lorena Arizona Sikes. She became the wife of Joseph Duckworth, and at her death, in 1882, left two children, Siddie Duckworth and Charles R. Dnekworth, the latter of whom married Lena Van Meter and resides in Rogers.
Mr. Sikes was made a Mason in Bentonville, in 1854, but in recent years has not affiliated with the order. His position as a citizen in the community commands the highest regard, and he is appealed to as an encyclopaedia upon the occurrences of Benton in the closed book of the past. He is a favorite with young and old, who are ever pleased to entertain him, and take delight in visiting him at his home.
NEEDHAM HI. GRADY, M. D. It is particularly gratifying at this point in an historical compilation of the state of Arkansas to here pre- sent a sketch of the career of Dr. Needham H. Grady, who is engaged in the active practice of his profession at Monette, in Craighead county. In the face of almost insurmountable difficulties he plodded persistently on, carning his education, and eventually, through determination and energy, made of success not an accident but a logical result. He is strictly a self-made man, and as such, a pernsal of his career offers both lesson and incentive. Dr. Grady is one of the pioneer physicians and surgeons of Monette, one of its leading merchants and an extensive farmer and man-of-affairs. Like many of the citizens of eastern Ar- kansas he is a native son of Tennessee, having been born in Obion county, that state, on the 5th of March, 1852. He grew up in the vi- cinity of Kenton, where his father, William Grady, settled on coming ont of North Carolina. The latter was a son of William Grady, who reared a family in the old Tar state of the Union, where he died about the year 1848. ITis son William, the Doctor's father, was married to Sarah Hargett, a native of North Carolina, and they were both sum- moned to the life eternal in 1862, the parents of twenty-three children, in which family there were three sets of twins. Thirteen of the above children grew to adult age and of the number but two survive at the present time, in 1911, namely-Dr. Grady, of this notice, and Charles, who resides in Gibson county, Tennessee.
Left an orphan at the early age of ten years. Dr. Grady had oe- casion to learn something of youthful trials withont parental aid and of temptations without parental advice and restraint. He acquired his early education by piecemeal as a child, but was so persistent and de- termined that he should have at least the fundamentals of a good com- mon-school education that he applied himself vigorously to work in order that he might thereby save up enough money for tuition in college later on. When he was able to take charge of a country school, at the age of nineteen years, he taught for two terms in Gibson county, Tennessee, and subsequently one term in Dunklin county, Missouri. Before he had funds enough to defray his expenses in college, however, he was obliged to work for a time as a farm hand, but eventually he was matriculated as a student in the old St. Louis College of Medicine, entering that in- stitution in 1881. At the end of a two-years' course he received a license
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to practice medicine in Missouri, where he practiced for two years. He then came to Arkansas, spending two years near Gainesville, when fail- ing health finally compelled him to seek a different atmosphere, with the result that he located at Round Mountain, in Independence county, Ar- kansas, until recovery seemed assured. He then established his home in Craighead county, having been licensed to practice in that district by the first board of medieal examiners under the new medical law of the state, his examination having taken place in Clay county in 1883. In 1886 he located at Stottsville, near Maey, where he initiated the long career of professional and commercial success that has marked his life. In that year he stocked a small general store in the little country village, increased its importance with the growing demands of the community, engaged in farming, built a cotton gin and became connected with every phase of industrial life in that place. When the railroad finally came toward that community and failed to make Macy a station he de- cided to move to Monette, and did so in 1898. Here he is one of the largest land owners of the locality, is engaged extensively and success- fully in farming by tenantry and owns stock in both the banks at Mo- nette, in each of which he is a director. He is also a stockholder in the Jonesboro, Lake City & Eastern Railway Company, in the Home Tele- phone Company and also in the P. & S. M. College, St. Louis.
Dr. Grady has achieved most remarkable success in connection with the work of his profession, and having become so deeply involved therein he found it difficult to withdraw long enough to finish his medical course. In 1900, however, he returned to the College of Physicians & Surgeons, at St. Louis, graduating in that excellent institution as a men- ber of the class of 1901, duly receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine. In 1903 he pursued a special post-graduate course in the New Orleans Polyelinie and in 1906 he again was a student there, receiving his post- graduate degree and making a specialty of gynecological surgery. Hav- ing thus equipped himself for a larger field of professional usefulness he supplied his office with the X-ray, with the improved nebulizer and with instruments for surgical work, until his is one of the best equipped offices in the county. In connection with the work of his profession he is affiliated with the Craighead County Medieal Society, with the Ar- kansas State Medical Society and with the American Medical Associa- tion.
In Butler county, Missouri, on the 5th of October, 1876, was sol- emnized the marriage of Dr. Grady to Miss Nancy A. Keith, a daughter of Ambrose Keith, who went to Missouri in the ante-bellum days. Mr. Keith was a farmer by occupation and at the time of the inception of the Civil war he enlisted as a soldier in the Confederate army, sacrificing his life for the cause of the South. Dr. and Mrs. Grady have no chil- dren. They are consistent members of the Christian church, in the vari- ous departments of whose work they are most active factors, and they are popular and prominent in connection with the best social affairs of the community.
In polities Dr. Grady accords an nncompromising allegiance to the principles and policies for which the Democratie party stands sponsor. and while he has never had time nor ambition for publie office of any deseription he gives freely of his aid and influence in support of all measures and enterprises projected for the good of the general welfare. Dr. Grady has lived a life of usefulness such as few men know. God- fearing, law-abiding, progressive, his life is as truly that of a Christian gentleman as any man's can well be. Unwaveringly he has done the right as he has interpreted it. His life history is worthy of commenda-
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tion and of emulation, for along honorable and straightforward lines he has won the success which erowns his efforts and which makes him one of the substantial citizens of Monette.
SWAN C. DOWELL. It is indeed appropriate that in a history of representative men and women of Arkansas should be presented a review of the life and achievements of such a citizen as Swan C. Dowell, of Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, the subject of this notice, who had devoted many years of his life to the material welfare of his commonwealth. To his personal efforts in the exploiting of the resources and oppor- tunities lying in wait for the homeseeker, his knowledge being gained at first hand and chiefly by the condueting of something akin to an agricultural experiment station of his own, to his intelligent and earnest appeal to the new and vigorous blood of the northern states to become beneficiaries of the advantages just across the threshold of the open door of Arkansas, has that portion of the state lying contiguous to his influ- enee developed a new civilization. This new civilization is not the typical Arkansas "razorback" veneered by contaet with enlightment and progress, but is an amalgamation of varied fertile, human elements which have emerged into aetivity as new being.
It was nearly a seore of years ago that Mr. Dowell foresaw and fore- casted the development and settlement of northeastern Arkansas and the opening up of dormant possibilities. Although a factor in the mer- eantile field at that time, he laid the foundation of his future work in experiments in agriculture and thereby gained that positive evidence as to results which he has sinee used so effectually in removing new set- tlers from "stale, flat and unprofitable" associations and transplanting them amid other scenes, to the mutual advantage of themselves and their adopted state.
The Dowell family is not a pioneer one as Arkansas pioneers are rated. Lawrence county, where it first located, is indeed one of the oldest in the state, and is one of the three first whose boundaries were established long before Arkansas achieved the distinetion of statehood, but the Dowells did not plant stake there until the year of 1867, at which date they settled at Clover Bend. and there and in its vieinity were passed the first years of their rural life in Arkansas. Their de- eision to make loeation at this point had heen made before leaving Clover Port, Kentucky, their native heath, where the father of our sub- jeet had been engaged in the mercantile business.
Christopher Dowell, father of the foregoing, was born in Meade county, Kentucky, in 1814. His antecedents were Scotch people, who, moved by love of greater opportunity, crossed the seas and took up their residence in the Old Dominion. Eventually our subject's grandfather came to the newer state of Kentucky, as was the fashion in his day. and there established his family. There he tilled the soil, reared his family of children to good citizenship, and, finally heing gathered unto his fathers, was there buried.
Christopher Dowell married in the year of 1842 Elizabeth Brander- burg, of Kentucky, daughter of John Branderburg, a direet deseendant of Price Branderburg, of the house of Branderburg. who by offending Emperor William was exiled and, coming to America. settled in Ken- tucky, the county of that name being called after him. After a useful and successful career in Arkansas as a planter and merchant he passed away in 1888, his widow surviving him three years, dying at the age of seventy-two in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, at the residence of her son,
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Swan C. Dowell. Five children were born of this union, namely, Isa- bella, Oliver, John Thomas, Marie and Swan Crutcher.
Swan Dowell was ten years of age when his parents first took up their abode in Lawrence county. His school advantages were compara- tively limited, but by thorough application, great ambition and a fertile brain he gained an education that many a college boy would have had reason to be proud of. He never lost an opportunity of increasing his knowledge through others or his own efforts, and his great sneeess in various branches of business in which he was eventually interested was due to this fact, as it was through his own efforts in acquiring the requisite knowledge that he was able to carry on whatever he undertook.
His first position in the world of affairs was as a elerk in a general merchandise store in Clover Bend, at the age of sixteen, and subsequent- ly he was employed and had an interest in a general store at Minturn, Arkansas, being also interested in the hotel business. In 1880 he and his wife moved to Walnut Ridge, where he, feeling sufficiently sure of himself, made an independent business venture, engaging in the drug business. He remained in that business some fifteen years, and in 1895 sold out to the Cooper Brothers in order to give his whole attention to the real estate business.
While a merchant Mr. Dowell had acquired a clientele as a real estate broker, and to him was due the effective innovation of seattering literature broadeast throughout the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana; said literature setting forth the advantages of Arkansas, and thereby was the cause of opening up a correspondence which resulted in a enrrent immigration to Arkansas. Northern farm- ers are especially partial to grasses, and a county which shows good re- sults as a hay producer interests them at once. Mr. Dowell was pre- pared with eonvineing evidence of Arkansas' adaptability to tame grasses. He had already proved this to his own satisfaction and by his own experiment, and he later demonstrated the adaptability of the soil in the bottoms as wheat and rice prodneers of superior yield and quality. He has shown that timothy and clover grow as profusely here as in their natural home, Kentucky, sometimes yielding three tons per acre at a single cut. He has also harvested "bumper" erops of wheat and oats. and has reached wonderful results with experiments in riee culture. This cereal was tried first in 1909 upon a small tract and was irrigated from a flowing well whose eapaeity was two thousand five hundred gal- lons per minute. It did so well that fifty aeres were planted in 1910 and five thousand bushels of grain, of the best quality, were harvested, indi- cating that the northern parts of the seetion are most desirable for the growing of this popular and important artiele of domestic eommerce.
As a result of this kind of experimentation and as a result of the success of farmers of Lawrence county who have attained like results with grasses, cotton and grains. Mr. Dowell has been able to eause the exchange of more real estate in northeastern Arkansas than any other one firm in the same business. Thus, it will be seen. that the great work of his life has contributed materially to the value of the farm land here and has built up a thriving community in a section which hitherto has been aetnally starving for an infusion of new blood. He is so truly loyal to eounty and state that he has been almost able to overlook the fact that all this has been of little material benefit to himself, which in a smaller heing might eliminate a great deal of the satisfaction.
He has been the agitator of every advantageous movement of in- provement that has been made for his home town and its people, always putting the first foot forward and using his influenee, which was far-
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reaching, for the bettering of Walnut Ridge and vieinity. Through his merits as a thorough and reliable business man he acquired the confi- denee and friendship of the influential men of affairs not alone in this state but all over the country.
In the urban affairs of Walnut Ridge Mr. Dowell has invested his means in the erection of buildings and in the promotion of enterprises for the public good requiring the investment of money. He was one of the prime movers in securing the electric line between his eity and Hoxie, which makes the two places praetieally one municipality, and he is president and treasurer of said company. This interurban road runs a car every thirty minutes, day and night, and furnishes a serviee equal to every demand of the business of the twin cities. Another interest of importance is his connection with the Lawrence County Bank, of which he is a stockholder and director, and he is also one of Lawrenee county's large land owners.
On June 10. 1878. Mr. Dowell formed an ideally happy life com- panionship by his marriage in St. Louis, Missouri, with Miss Alee Wall, a daughter of Charles and Mary (Delaney) Wall. The father and mother were Irish by birth and their union occurred while still resident in the Emerald Isle, the father being a graduate of Dublin College, the mother, a graduate from the Sacred Heart Convent. They were elose friends of Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish orator. Bishop Marum, of Ossary, and eonfessor to the Court of Spain, was a near relative on the mother's side. Hameill Marum, another member of the family, was a very much honored member of parliament. The children of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Dowell are: Walter, Antony. Mary Isabella, Oliver Kyran, Agnes Elizabeth, Aliee ('eeilia, Ruth Cleveland. Aloysius Swan and Regenia Aurelia.
Mr. Dowell is one of the most public spirited of men and his watch- word is improvement and progress. He built the first piece of sidewalk laid in Walnut Ridge, has erected many of the business houses and re- cently added to the charming and substantial abodes of the city a mod- ern and model home, a monument to his progressive spirit and a eredit to the little metropolis in which he lives. In his political leanings he is a Demoerat, but, except as a voter, he has no liking for the game of polities. He is a member of the Benevolent and Proteetive Order of Elks, Jonesboro Lodge, No. 498.
JUDGE F. M. GOAR. One of the most prominent representatives of the legal profession in Arkansas of any day or generation was Judge Francis Marion Goar, formerly of Mississippi, but in the last ten years of his life a resident of the state of Arkansas. This gentleman, who died in April, 1898, was the first dean of the law department of the University of Arkansas, at Fayetteville, and he was serving as such at the time of his death, the department having been removed to Little Rock previous to that time.
Judge Goar was born in Yalobusha eounty, Mississippi, in 1844. The following year his parents removed to this state, settling in Drew county. In 1850 the mother died and the father went to California, where he also died, thus leaving the subject an orphan at the tender age of five years. He was sent baek to his grandparents in Mississippi and there he grew toward manhood. alternately working on the farm and going to school, this peaceful program continuing until the outbreak of the Civil war. When barely fifteen years of age young Goar en- listed in the Second Mississippi Regiment of the Confederate serviee and. although discharged by reason of being under age, he returned to
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Mississippi and assisted in raising a company of which he became suc- cessively lieutenant and captain, serving until the close of the Civil war.
In 1865, at the age of twenty years, Judge Goar resumed his former course, alternating between farm work and attendance at sehool, this continuing until 1870, when he graduated from the law department of the University of Mississippi and entered regularly upon the practice of his profession. He continued in this until 1887, when he removed to Arkansas, settling at Fayetteville. Two years later he was selected by the board of trustees of the University there as dean of the law depart- ment. He at once entered zealously upon the work of building up this institution to a high point of excellence, which has given it a name ex- tending far beyond state borders. In 1892 he removed to Little Rock and in the following year, upon the organization of the Little Rock law class as the Law Department of the State University, he was elected dean and was in service in that capacity at the time of his death.
Judge Goar was deeply and thoroughly versed in the law, as was evident in his graduation with the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the University of Mississippi, his alma mater, and his subsequent career served to add to his store of knowledge in that field. Of dignified and impressive bearing, his law discourses carried with them such con- ciseness, clarity and weight that his hearers could not but reap perma- nent advantages. He had, indeed, great gifts as an instructor in the science of jurisprudence. It was in the midst of service of this kind that his useful career was cut short. He had attained but to the age of fifty-four years and when his powers were at their zenith and with the promise of many more years of usefulness and strength before him, he was summoned to the bourne "whence no traveler returns." In his decease one of the strong men of Arkansas was lost-one who had al- ready filled a large space in public thought and for whom it seemed that life had still greater things in reserve.
Politieally, as Judge Goar himself expressed it, "without a single misgiving or deviation," he always acted with the Demoeratie party- national, county, state and municipal, and he had taken pride at times in the fact that he had never "scratched" a tieket of his party.
Very shortly before Judge Goar's death he became a candidate for attorney general, and his great friend, Governor Stone, of Mississippi, included this tribute to his character and powers in a most enthusiastic letter of endorsement, published in the Arkansas Democrat:
"Mr. Goar is a man of the highest order of integrity, temperate in habits, moral and discreet in his deportment, and faithful to every social demand, as well as to every public trust. He is a man of superior intellectual attainments, a lawyer of eminent ability, and if he should give his consent to stand for the office of attorney general the people of the state of Arkansas will honor themselves in bestowing upon him that important offiee. He is upholding the honor of his native state by a faithful and self-sacrificing service to that of his adoption. No one who knows the history of this man as I have known it could reasonably ex- peet anything else of him, yet it is none the less gratifying to his many friends in Mississippi."
In referring to Judge Goar's military record, the governor speaks of him as a gallant soldier and an excellent officer.
Judge Goar married Miss Belle Robins, a nieee of Private John Allen, of Mississippi. Of this union nine children were born, cight daughters and one son, Francis M., Jr. They all now live at Tupelo, Mississippi.
Vol. III-13
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MRS. THOMAS H. BARNES, is the widow of the late Thomas H. Barnes, one of the most honorable and distinguished lawyers Sebastian county has ever known. For four years he served with efficiency as United States district attorney for the Western district of Arkansas and during his life- time his record as a skillful lawyer and well fortified counselor was of unexcelled order. Mrs. Barnes, who has long maintained her home at Fort Smith, is a woman of strong mental faculties, magnetic personality and broad human sympathy and she is deeply admired and beloved by all with whom she has come in contact.
The girl Fronie Mellette, now Mrs. Barnes, was born at Newcastle, Henry county, Indiana, a daughter of Luther C. Mellette. When Mrs. Barnes was a mere child the family removed to the state of Illinois and thence to Fort Smith, Arkansas, about the year 1868, shortly after the close of the Civil war. Mr. Mellette married Miss Adaline E. Moore and to them were born five children, namely,-Mrs. Barnes, of this review ; William Moore Mellette; Elmer E., an attorney of Los Angeles, Cali- fornia; Josiah H., deceased; and Mrs. J. N. Hewes, deceased. The late William Moore Mellette, who was summoned to the life eternal at Mus- kogee, Oklahoma, in May, 1910, was a lawyer of high standing. He was prepared for the legal profession at Fort Smith, under the able pre- ceptorship of Thomas H. Barnes, in partnership with whom he enjoyed a large and Incrative practice for several years, mostly in the federal court for the Western district of Arkansas. He was assistant United States district attorney under W. H. H. Clayton for several years. In 1896, in which year the old Indian Territory jurisdiction was taken from the federal court at Fort Smith, Mr. Mellette removed to Vinita, Oklahoma. Subsequently he was appointed United States district attorney for the federal court of the Indian Territory and this position took him to Mus- kogee, where he continued to reside until called to the Great Beyond. He was incumbent of the latter position for a period of nine years, during which time he served to the best of his ability, giving the utmost satis- faction to all parties concerned. His was a conspicuously successful career. Endowed by nature with high intellectual qualities, to which were added the discipline and embellishment of culture, his was a most attractive personality. Well versed in the learning of his profession, and with a deep knowledge of human nature and the springs of human conduct, with great shrewdness and sagacity and extraordinary tact, he was in the courts an advocate of great power and influence. Both judges and juries always heard him with attention and deep interest. Luther C. Mellette was called to eternal rest at Fort Smith, and his wife passed away in Los Angeles, California.
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