USA > Arkansas > Historical review of Arkansas : its commerce, industry and modern affairs > Part 32
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Mr. Knox married first, October 10, .1889, Maggie Jones, who died August 10, 1898, leaving no children. Mr. Knox married for his sec- ond wife Hattie MeLeod, a daughter of R. N. MeLeod, who came to Greene county from Mississippi, and they have two children, Clara May and Ella.
ELI MEISER. A man of far-reaching thought, vigorous will and good business ability, Eli Meiser, president of the National Bank of Commerce of Paragould, is recognized as one of the leading citizens of his community, and is held in high esteem by his fellow-men and asso- ciates. One of the old mill men of this great lumber region, he has infused his spirit into other live and active commercial and industrial concerns, and in connection with the various enterprises with which he has been identified has manifested an intimate knowledge of the possi- bilities of his undertakings, his thirty years of residence in Greene county having been fraught with substantial consequences both to him- self and to the communities with which his lot has been cast. A son of Benjamin Meiser, he was born May 13, 1846, in Allen county, Indi- ana, and is of sturdy Dutch stock, his ancestors having emigrated front Holland to Pennsylvania in early Colonial days.
John Meiser, his grandfather, spent his earlier life in Berks county, Pennsylvania, there growing to manhood and marrying. He after- ward moved with his family to Ohio, located in Stark county, where he engaged in the agricultural and pastoral pursuits that had occupied the attention of his forefathers, remaining in that county the remainder of his years.
Benjamin Meiser was horn in Berks county, Pennsylvania, in 1818, and in boyhood was taken by his parents to Stark county, Ohio, where he acquired a common school education. In 1843, inspired with the same restless spirit that impelled his emigrant ancestor to cross the broad Atlantic, he went from Ohio to Indiana, locating in Allen county.
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Taking up a tract of heavily timbered land, he hewed a farm from the forest, and was industriously and prosperously engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death, in 1896. He was a man of upright character and principles, a devout member of the Methodist church, and reared his family in a Christian home. He married, in Stark county, Ohio, Fiatti Sausser, a daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Sausser, who was of Colonial anecstry and the deseendant of a French Huguenot family. She survived her husband, passing away in 1908. Five children were born into their home, as follows: John, who died in Allen county, Indi- ana, leaving a family; Eli, the special subject of this brief biographical record; Lizzie, wife of Elias Hire, of Fort Wayne, Indiana; Sarah, wife of Owen Kannard, of Smith county, Kansas; and Frankie, wife of J. B. Allen, of Reetor, Arkansas.
Brought up in a rural distriet, Eli Meiser acquired his early educa- tion in the primitive schools of his day, living with his parents until aft- er the outbreak of the Civil war. He enlisted, in 1862, in Company C, Eighty-eighth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, from which he was dis- charged, and he then became a member of Company C, Forty-fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and served as a private in the Army of the Cumberland until receiving his honorable discharge, in September, 1865, in the meantime taking an active part in many battles of importance. Returning home, Mr. Meiser found employment in a luumher mill, for a time being engaged in wheeling sawdust and doing other menial work ahout the plant. As time passed, he became familiar with the details of milling, and having accumulated some capital in the meantime, he began business for himself at Areola, Indiana, cutting and manufactur- ing railroad timbers. He subsequently located in Mace, Montgomery county, Indiana, where he operated a saw mill for several years.
Coming from there to Arkansas in 1882, Mr. Meiser ereeted a hum- ber mill at Rector. Clay county, where he carried on a substantial busi- ness for fifteen years. Transferring his business and residence to Paragould in 1897, he ereeted a similar plant near the town, and ope- rated it suceessfully until 1901. Disposing then of his milling interests. Mr. Meiser has since been busily employed in looking after his other interests, which are many and valuable. He has been one of the prime movers in the establishment of numerous enterprises, and was a dominant factor in the organization of the National Bank of Commerce of Paragould, which was authorized to do business as a State bank on July 1, 1901, and of which he has been president ever since. The bank was capitalized at fifty thousand dollars, and with the exception of the cashiership its officers are the same as at first elected. In January, 1911, the institution was converted into a national bank, the capital being inereased to one hundred thousand dollars, with a surplus of the same amount. The officers, all men of prominence in the business world, are as follows: Eli Meiser, president ; Richard Jackson, vice-president, succeeding S. L. Joseph ; and H. W. Woosley, cashier, having succeeded L. S. Parker. the first cashier of the institution. The Board of Diree- tors ineludes in addition to the bank officers Messrs. J. D. Block, R. C. Grizzard and Joseph Wolf.
Although not an active politician, Mr. Meiser votes with the Re- publican party on national questions : fraternally he is a Master Mason and belongs to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; and re- ligiously he is a Methodist, having never swerved from the faith in which he was reared.
Mr. Meiser married first, at Valparaiso, Indiana, December 25, 1867. Mary Kennard, a daughter of D. C. Kennard, an Ohio farmer.
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She died in Paragould, Arkansas, in 1900, leaving four children. namely : Gordon B., a real estate dealer of Milbourn, Oklahoma; Leona, wife of C. E. Livingood, of Chicago; Wallace B., engaged in the brokerage business at Stigler, Oklahoma; and John G., who is connected with the milling interests of Paragould. Mr. Meiser married, in December, 1904, at Springfield, Missouri, Emily Kennard, a niece of his first wife.
JUDGE JASON L. LIGIIT is county judge of Greene county. He is one of the members of the bar of the state and as a legist and jurist his honors rest on large and definite accomplishments. No eitizen eom- mands a fuller measure of popular confidence and regard, for he has shown himself one of the most zealous for the progress and ultimate well being of eastern Arkansas and none is more worthy of consideration through the medium of a review in this history of Arkansas and its people. Judge Light is all but a native of the municipality over which he presides, since he eame with his parents in 1871 from Forsythe county, Georgia, where he was born November 3, 1865. His father was Pleasant Green Light, who was a tiller of the soil of Greene county and who spent several years in publie offiee. He was tax assessor for six years, and in that office displayed sound business ability and gave evi- denee by his fund of information that he was a man of liberal edueation, despite the faet that his opportunities in this line had been deficient.
Pleasant G. Light was born in Forsythe county, Georgia, in 1838. and was the son of Benton Light, a planter of Seoteh-Irish lineage, who passed his life where his son was born. He married Flora Mooney, a daughter of Robert Mooney and a grand-daughter of a native of Erin's Isle, who founded on Ameriean soil his branch of the numerous family of the name. The elder Mr. Light died in 1893, twelve years after the death of his wife, and their children were as follows: James W., of Waleott, Arkansas; Judge Jason L., of Paragould; George O., eashier of the Security Bank & Trust Company of Paragould; Mollie, wife of Henry G. Langley, of Paragould; and Luenette, now Mrs. W. W. Peve- house, of Oklahoma. During the Civil war period Pleasant G. Light identified himself with the Confederaey, enlisting as a soldier and serv- ing in the eorps of General John B. Gordon, in whose gallantry the young wearer of the grey took a pardonable pride. It was his portion to become in post-bellum days a useful citizen, and his children bear the imprint of his enlightened training.
Judge Jason L. Light eame to mature years in the country near Paragould and attended the common schools somewhat irregularly. His was an adventurous spirit and at the age of eighteen years he decided to escape the restraints of home life by leaving the parental roof. Wan- dering far afield, he located at Uvalde, Texas, where he served two years on a cow ranch and for one year was county deputy sheriff. Ile re- mained in Uvalde for four years and then spent a year in Peeos City, subsequently erossing over into New Mexico and spending three years in the vicinity of Roswell and Carlsbad. In this period he engaged in ranching and other pursuits and enjoyed to the utmost the freedom of the plains. He remained in the west and far southwest for no less than a decade and then returned to Arkansas to spend a year in sehool as a student in Thompson's Classical Institute at Paragould.
In the meantime Judge Light had come to a decision as to his future career and he engaged in a course of reading in the office of Crowley, Luna & Johnson, leading lawyers of Paragould, being ad- mitted to the bar in 1897 before Judge F. G. Taylor. He at once
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began upon his practice, and during his career in the profession he was pleasantly associated with Mr. D. G. Beauchamp and subsequently with J. T. Craig, under the firm name of Light & Beauchamp and of Light & Craig, his practice upon both occasions being of a general character.
In 1906 Jason L. Light became a candidate for county judge. The vast tracts of low and fertile lands in Greene county seemed doomed to lie dormant for lack of drainage and the most fertile portion of the county remained nndeveloped and under those conditions valueless. It was Mr. Light's ambition to hold the office which controlled the destiny of these lands and to mould publie sentiment to the condition of realizing the necessity of the installation of a system of drainage. It was his idea to drain various small traets as samples, and when their excellent results had appeared, to bring under enltivation or at least render fit for cultivation every low land farm in Greene county. He made the campaign for the office upon this issue and was elected in 1906. Two years later, when his fine plans were just well under way and taxes had begun to pile up as a result of the policy, it required the strenuous efforts of his friends of the reasoning element to re-elect him. When another two years had rolled around the benefits derived from his policy were so apparent that he simply "stood" for re-election and accepted the office that was returned to him in 1910.
Judge Light's experience as the savior of the low-lying section of the state forms one of the interesting pages of Arkansas history and has been vividly told in the following artiele published in a leading American daily of recent date:
"Threatened five years ago by an infuriated citizenship with lynch- ing because he had organized a drainage district and levied a tax for the reclamation of swamp lands, today Judge Jason L. Light of Greene county is acclaimed the father of the drainage movement in Arkansas and there is not in the whole county a man more popular or more highly esteemed. The transformation that has been wrought during his three terms as county judge has been little short of marvelous, and many other counties of Eastern Arkansas are following the trail he blazed. All over Eastern Arkansas, from Butler county, Missouri, to Louisiana parishes, the rich alluvial stretches of land that have here- tofore been valueless are being reclaimed and made tillable. The valley of the Nile is not more productive, as the fertility comes from ages of decaying vegetation and, with the silt of centuries, makes a soil of unequaled strength.
Starting with one district five years ago, with a surging mob of protesting tax-payers surrounding the court house, remonstrating against the levying of the tax, there are now in Greene county thirteen drain- age districts that will reclaim one-third of the area of the county and affect about one-half. These districts represent an aggregate improve- ment of about $1,500,000. The Cache-Greene-Lawrence district alone will cost $300,000; the St. Francis district will cost half a million ; Grassy Slough about $200,000; and the others range from $25.000 to $100,000 each.
Crowley's Ridge, the first elevation west of the Mississippi, cuts the country through from northwest to southeast. The drainage is being done systematically, with a fixed object in view, all the districts eo-operating. Ditches run along the base of the ridge on both sides and from these extend laterals to the Cache and the St. Francis. Lands that a few years ago were not worth the taxes are now worth from five to fifty dollars an aere and are supporting splendid plantations.
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Adjacent counties are taking up the drainage projeet and districts are being established in Clay, Craighead, Poinsett, Mississippi, Crit- tenden, St. Franeis. Cross, Lee, Philips, Arkansas, Desha, Chicot and other counties, millions of aeres of land being reclaimed.
On July 10. 1897, in Greene county, Judge Light was first married, his wife being Miss Amanda Stepp, who died April 15, 1905. The children of the union were Luna Johnson and Nola Cullen. In Sep- tember, 1906. he was united in marriage to Miss Agnes Corgon, dangh- ter of Cyrus Corgan, of St. Louis, Missouri, and the issue of this mar- riage are Juanita, Jason Lowell and Lois Jeanne. The Light home is an attractive and hospitable abode and Judge and Mrs. Light are most popular members of society.
The Judge takes no small amount of pleasure in his fraternal affiliations, being a Master Mason and holding memberships as an Oddfellow, an Elk and a Woodman of the World.
CAPTAIN BENJAMIN HARRISON CROWLEY. Among the interesting personalities and important and publie spirited citizens of this section of the state is Captain Benjamin Harrison Crowley, of Paragould, who is a pioneer of the bar of Greene county, an extensive farmer and a representative of one of the first families to enter the state. The family was founded as early as 1821, by the grandfather of the sub- jeet. Benjamin Crowley, who located where the town of Walcott sub- sequently eame into being, there securing a plantation which he operated with slave labor and dying there in 1848 when past ninety years of age. It was his distinction to enter the first pieee of government land filed at the Batesville land office, which tract belongs to his grandson, the subjeet of this review. Benjamin was born in Virginia, and appears to have been reared in Georgia, and there is record that he migrated from that state to Kentucky during the closing years of the eighteenth een- tury and assisted in surveying the government land of the Blue Grass state. He lived for a time in Webster county and when he left there to come to Arkansas, his brothers, John and Edmund, remained be- hind. He likewise had a brother in Tennessee and another in Coweta county, Georgia, where his early life was passed. He took as his wife, Ann Wiley, who survived him for some years and both are interred at Waleott in the family plot. The issue of the union of these prominent people were Polly, who married Abraham Revehonse and was the moth- er of the first white child born on Crowley's Ridge, where she passed away: Thomas, who died here as a stockman; Sallie, who became the wife of Thomas Lamb and died in Greene county: Samuel, the father of the subject: Margaret, who first married Charles Robinson, the first sheriff of Greene county, and subsequently became the wife of John MeDaniel : Wiley, who died on Crowley's Ridge; and Benjamin, who passed away in early manhood, unmarried.
Samuel Crowley, father of the suhjeet, was born in Kentucky in 1798 and passed his life as a eattle and horse dealer in Greene county. In that day the land was valuable only for the grass it would prodnee, and the outlying domain was so cast that its ownership was not greatly sought. The maiden name of the young woman whom Samuel Crowley took to wife was Sallie Hutchins, daughter of Zachariah Hutchins, who migrated to Arkansas from Tennessee and made his final home on the townsite of Paragould, where he died. The maiden name of Mrs. Hutchins was Shepard. Samuel Crowley was not destined for long life, his demise oeeurring in 1842, and Captain Crowley being his only son. His widow subsequently married Robert H. Halley and be-
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came the mother of the following children: Francis P., who was killed as a Confederate soldier at the battle of Franklin; Ardenia, wife of Captain Torbet, who died at Big Springs, Texas; Victoria V., who died unmarried; Sarah J., who was thriee married, her first husband being H. C. Gramling, her second John M. Lloyd, and her third R. C. Greene: Robert H., who died while a student in the University of Ar- kansas: and John M., a successful farmer of Greene county. The moth- er passed on to the "Undiscovered Country" in 1861.
Captain Benjamin H. Crowley was reared in his mother's home and in early youth passed a rural life, roaming the woodlands after stock, following the plow and assisting in the many duties of seedtime and harvest. He attended the log cabin school and just before the Civil war was a student for a year in Crawford Institute at Van Buren, Arkansas. He was then about twenty years of age, for he was born October 28, 1841. He was married in 1860, and had just begun life as a farmer when the long threatening struggle between the states became a reality and he enlisted in the first year in Captain Dillard's company. This company was subsequently disbanded without seeing active service and shortly thereafter Captain Crowley went to the In- dian Territory and joined Captain Featherston's company of the Nine- teenth Arkansas, of the army of General Albert Pike. The regiment was subsequently separated from the command and ordered to report to General Hindman, was drilled into condition in the vicinity of Little Rock and assisted in the building of Arkansas Post and the de- fense of the city. The subject was promoted to first lieutenant of his company and when General Churchill surrendered to the Federals he commanded the first company that erossed the pontoon bridge Sep- tember 10. 1863. Ile gained his liberty with others and went on a recruiting expedition in western Arkansas, gathering together a body of troops attempting to guard the retreat of General Jo Shelby out of Missouri. While on this duty he was captured, held a military pris- oner in various places in the state and out of it and he was finally taken to Johnson's Island in Lake Erie, where he was released on ex- change some fifteen months later, together with one hundred and eighty officers of General Kirby Smith's department who had been captured. Reporting to General Fagan, he was ordered to reeruit a bodyguard for the General from among straggling troops of Seott county, with whom he had already served, and he did so, disbanding them on Red River when the Confederaey was dissolved.
Until 1867 Captain Crowley remained a farmer in Seott county. Arkansas, but in that year he returned to Greene county and resumed the same oceupation while carrying on his preparations for the law. This he had begun while a Federal prisoner on Johnson's Island, among his instructors being Colonel George, of Mississippi. who subsequently became a United States senator from that state. Captain Crowley was admitted to the bar in Greene county in 1871, was made a member of the Federal court at Helena in 1874 and of the Supreme court of Ark- ansas in 1887. He has been identified with praetice ever since that time and his abilities have given him reputation as one of the ablest of his profession.
Captain Crowley entered polities rather earlier than most men who had horne commissions in the Confederate army, for his politieal dis- ability was removed by a special act of Congress in 1869. In 1872 he was sent to the legislature from this district, which then comprised the counties of Greene, Lawrence, Randolph and Sharpe, and while in the assembly at Little Rock he seenred the passage of the bill creating
Unatención
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Clay county. It was a Republican legislature and about all the hand- ful of Democrats could do was to "protest and object." He was a member of the called session of 1874, which is a historie one in Arkansas, owing to the Brooks and Baxter war troubles, and that same year he was elected a delegate to the constitutional convention. He served on the committees which created the representative and senatorial dis- triets of the state and did much of the work himself.
In 1876 Captain Crowley was elected to the state senate and served in that body for four years. He was a member of the Judiciary com- mittee and during the first session he was chairman of the committee on penitentiary, which made an investigation of the institution and re- ported at length its findings. During the second session he was chair- man of the committee on state lands. In 1888 he was again elected to the senate and served another four years. In 1894 he was appointed by President Cleveland receiver of the land office at Little Rock and a service of four years in that city concluded his active participation in polities. During all these years he attended nearly every state con- vention of his party, and he had personal acquaintance with all the leaders and was in elose touch with them in thought and action. In 1910 he attended at Washington, D. C., the Rivers and Harbors Con- vention, having been commissioned by Governor Donaghy.
Captain Crowley has been almost as active a figure in the agricnl- tural history of the section as he has in the field of politics. At the elose of the war he had a farm of two hundred acres to begin with, and with the passing of the years he has greatly added thereto. His varions farms now comprise some 3,000 acres and he has under cultivation more than a thousand acres. He maintained his home at Walcott until 1889. but he then removed to Paragould, where he has ever since resided.
Captain Crowley was first married to Miss Elizabeth J. Crowley, who died in 1880, after twenty years of happy married life. The chil- dren of this union were as follows: Victoria V., wife of Rev. J. D. Sibert. of Key West, Florida; Cynthia, who married L. W. Zook, of Para- gould, and is deceased: Nannie. wife of H. R. Wood, of Paragould ; Lueins G., a farmer and minister of Gainesville, Arkansas: Miss Belle and Judge Benjamin H., the two latter residing in Paragould. Cap- tain Crowley married Miss Rhoda L. Fielder for his second wife, and this admirable lady died in 1301. She was a native of Hickman county, Tennessee, and left a daughter, Sallie, who is a member of her father's household at Paragould.
Captain Crowley is prominent as a Mason, having token the Scot- tish Rite and Shriner's degree and holding membership in the Albert Pike Consistory and Al Amin Temple. He is also affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He retains his interest and loyalty for the comrades who wore the gray in other days and has sus- tained close relation with the United Confederate Veterans, having served the order officially, attended many of its annual national en- campinents and being brigadier general of one of the departments of Arkansas.
WILLIAM JENKINS is the senior member of the real estate and loan firm of William Jenkins & Company, of Eureka Springs, and has been identified with the state of Arkansas since 1894. He has been of the country west of the Mississippi river since the year 1888, when he went from his native state of Ohio to Osage City, Kansas. Three years later he became identified with Sedalia, Missouri, and came thence to Eureka Springs. During his connection with the west he has been a dealer in
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and handler of real estate and has been engaged in the business of loaning private money, and since coming to Eureka Springs he has built up one of the principal financial enterprises here.
Mr. Jenkins is a native of the Buckeye state, his birth having oc- eurred in Stark county, Ohio, July 18. 1850, and his childhood and youth were passed in the country near the city of Canton, which is particu- larly interesting to Americans as the home of the martyred MeKinley. His parents both died when he was barely of school age and his rearing fell to the direction of others. He had not had an opportunity to acquire even an ordinary common school education when it was made known to him that he would be responsible for his own livelihood. He was a very dauntless young fellow and he determined to cheat Dame Fortune in her nefarious designs. Before he had reached his majority he went to C'anton to become a factory employe and while there he attended a night school and made great strides toward piecing out his interrupted education. Like Oliver Twist he ever longed for "more" and after reaching the age of twenty-four years he attended an academy at Chilli- eothe. Ohio, aequiring there an education which has made possible suc- cessful competition with his fellows in the battle of life.
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