USA > Arkansas > Historical review of Arkansas : its commerce, industry and modern affairs > Part 56
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Ilon. Hamp Williams, to whom this sketch is dedicated, was reared and educated in Sebastian county, and in early youth he became in- terested in the mercantile business. In 1894, when thirty-four years of age, he established his home in Hot Springs, where he engaged in the hardware business in February, 1896. He conducted this business in- dividually until 1906, when it was incorporated under the laws of the state as the Hamp Williams Hardware Company, of which he is presi- dent. Concerning the rest of the officers of the company, Norval Will- iams. a brother, is vice-president and Clyde Morris is secretary and treasurer. The concern has a capital stock of sixty-five thousand dollars, and its headquarters are in the Hamp Williams Building, a substantial and commodions brick structure of three stories, located on Onachita avenue, at 414-20. In connection with this line of enterprise Mr. Will- iams has become one of the eminently successful merchants of the state, the company condneting a jobbing and retail business with a widely extended trade. A branch house is maintained at Womble, Arkansas. Aside from the hardware business Mr. Williams has other important financial interests. He is vice-president of the Citizens' National Bank of Hot Springs, vice-president of the Business Men's League, vice-presi- dent of the Arkansas State Fair and former president of the Arkansas Retail Hardware Association. He organized and is manager of the Boys' Corn Club, which is stimulating an increased and more intelli- gent prodnetion of corn by the offering of prizes to farmer boys. He is the owner of a fine farm near Black Springs, in Montgomery county, a portion of which he has devoted to experimental purposes in co-opera- tion with the Agricultural Department at Washington. D. C.
In politics he gives his support to the cause of the Democratic party, and he has been an influential factor in connection with the civic aetivi- ties of his home city and has done much to promote the general develop- ment and prosperity of the state. He served most satisfactorily for several terms as city alderman, and in 1909 he was elected state senator, representing the Thirty-first senatorial district, comprised of Garland and Montgomery counties. In the deliberative body of the legislature his services have been of a highly satisfactory nature, and he has been influential in procuring much important legislation to his district. In
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the time-honored Masonie fraternity he has attained to the thirty-sec- ond degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, holding membership in Little Rock Consistory, and he is a member of the A. A. O. N. M. S. He is past master of Sumpter Lodge No. 419, Free and Accepted Ma- sons, of Hot Springs. On February 3, 1880, Mr. Williams married Miss Katie MeDonald, of Montgomery county, Arkansas. She died Jannary 29, 1898, leaving three children-Odie, of Hot Springs: Cleo, wife of Robert Sendder, of Black Springs: and Winnie, at home. On the 7th of June. 1899. was celebrated the marriage of Mr. Williams to Miss Nan- nie Middleton, of Black Springs. Montgomery county.
JOHN B. SIMMS. Among the essentially progressive and enterpris- ing citizens of Lake Village, Chicot county, Arkansas, is John B. Simms, who is vice-president of the Chieot Bank & Trust Company, an emi- nently substantial monetary institution which holds prestige as one of the leading banks in this seetion of the state. Mr. Simms was born in Lake Village on the 1st of January, 1877, a son of John G. B. Simms, who holds the record for being the oldest law practitioner in Chieot county. The father was born in Culpeper county, Virginia, the date of his nativity being May 1, 1845. He migrated to Arkansas from the Old Dominion commonwealth, studied law with Attorney-general Garland and was admitted to the bar of Arkansas in 1869. Thereafter he was engaged in the active practice of his profession at Little Rock for a period of six months, at the expiration of which he came to Lake Village, where he was a successful practitioner until 1890. In the lat- ter year he established his home at Little Rock, and in that city and at Conway he was engaged in aetive practice for the ensuing ten years. In 1900, however, he returned to Lake Village, where he has since main- tained his home and where he controls a large and lucrative elientage, the same consisting of many of the most prominent and influential busi- ness men in Chieot county. In 1883 he was elected to represent his distriet in the state legislature, and during the sessions of '89, '91 and '99 he was elerk of the house. At the present time, in 1911, he has just completed his fourth year as state senator. He is a man of recognized ability in the legal profession, and in the various public offices of which he has been ineumbent he has aeqnitted himself with all of honor and. distinction. He married Miss Mattie G. Chapman, and to them were born nine children, seven of whom are now living.
In polities Mr. Simms. Sr., has ever been aligned as a staneh sup- porter of the cause of the Democratic party, and he has always done everything in his power to advanee the general welfare of the com- munity. In his religious faith he is a devont member of the Baptist church at Lake Village, and for ten years he was secretary of the Bap- tist State Convention. For a number of years he was a member of the board of trustees of Central College, at Conway, Arkansas, and for a period of two years he was a helpful member of the state board of charities. When the dark cloud of Civil war east its pall over a divided nation he showed his intrinsic loyalty to the cause of the South by en- listing as a soldier in Company H. Seventeenth Arkansas Infantry. He was soon promoted to the rank of second sergeant, and at the time of the final surrender was aeting ordnance officer of the brigade. Beside par- tieipating in many of the most thrilling engagements marking the prog- ress of the war he was a member of the squad of six men who captured General Neil Dow, near Port Hudson, Louisiana, in May, 1863.
John B. Simms, the immediate subject of this review, was educated in the puhlie schools of Little Rock and the private schools of Lake
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Village, which training he later supplemented by a commercial course in Key's Business College at Little Rock. While still a youth he entered upon an apprenticeship at the carpenter's trade, with the work of which he continued to be identified until 1901, in November of which year he became cashier of the Chicot Bank. On September 1, 1907. the Chicot Bank and the Lake Village Bank were consolidated under the firm name of the Chicot Bank & Trust Company, of which Mr. Simms was elected vice-president. In addition to his banking interests he conducts a thriv- ing real estate business, in which connection he has done much to im- prove the general appearance of Lake Village and to increase general property values. Politically he endorses the cause of the Democratie party, and he is extensively known as a citizen who ever has the best interests of the public good at heart.
In the year 1902 was recorded the marriage of Mr. Simms to Miss Julia Carlton, who was born and reared in Chieot county and who is a daughter of Z. T. Carlton, a prominent business man of Lake Village. To this union were born three daughters -- Mary Lynn, Matilda (de- ceased) and Julia.
W. I. PAYNE, who has extensive interests in Jefferson county, Ar- kansas, has contributed in no small measure to the general progress and development of Sherrill, which has represented his home since 1890. He was born near Star City, Lincoln, Arkansas, in 1867. His father was identified with agricultural pursuits during the major portion of his active business career and he established his home in Jefferson county. Mr. Payne was reared to the sturdy discipline of the home farm, in the work and management of which he early began to assist his father. He availed himself of the advantages afforded in the public schools of his native county and of those in Star City, and when twenty-two years of age he established his home in Sherrill, where for a period of six years he clerked for J. M. Barrett, after giving most efficient service as as- sistant postmaster. After severing his connection with Mr. Barrett he entered the employ of Captain Tucker, at Tueker, Jefferson county, and elerked for him for eighteen months. In 1899 he initiated his inde- pendent business career by opening a general merchandise store at Sher- rill. He has been eminently successful in this line of enterprise and his stock has been increased from time to time as his trade has de- manded. His success and high standing in Sherrill today are the result of thrift and industry, his persistency and determination to forge ahead making him one of the foremost business men in the county. Aside from his mercantile enterprise he is an interested principal in the Mississippi Valley Life Insurance Company of Little Rock, the Consumers Ice Com- pany of Pine Bluff, and he conducts an extensive plantation near Sher- rill. In polities he accords a staunch allegiance to the Democratic party. He is a man of sterling integrity, modest and unassuming, a home lover who seeks and finds his chief pleasure by his own fireside in the com- panionship of his family and intimate personal friends.
Mrs. Payne was, before her marriage, Miss Nora Burton, who was reared and educated in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Mr. and Mrs. Payne have one daughter, Lucille.
CHARLES M. HILLMAN. One of her best-known and best-beloved citizens was lost to Almyra, Arkansas county, Arkansas, by the death of C. M. Hillman, who from 1884 until the time of his death, May 9, 1910. was identified with the life of the locality. Mr. Hillman was not a native son of the state, for his birth occurred in Jonia county. Michi-
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gan, March 20, 1854. In 1884 he came to Almyra and secured a farm- ing property near the town and there conducted agricultural opera- tions for the space of half a dozen years. In 1890 he brought his family into town and made a change by starting a general store, and by the exercise of honest business methods and accommodating and courteous treatment of customers he built up a loyal trade. In 1890 he was ap- pointed to the office of postmaster, and with the exception of the four years of Cleveland's second term served continuously until December, 1909, when on account of failing health he relinquished the active duties of the office and was succeeded by his wife, Mrs. Laura Hillman.
On December 7, 1878, Mr. Hillman was married to Miss Laura Molonson, of Newaygo county, Michigan, where their marriage was cele- brated. To this union were born three children. Ida E. married C. B. Wheeler, a rice planter living near Almyra. Fred E. is also identified with the rice industry in the capacity of planter. He married Grace Chambers, of Almyra. Clark C. is a practicing physician, graduate of Rush Medical College, of Chicago, Illinois, and of the University of Ar- kansas. He was married to Miss Martha Wood, of Van Buren, Arkan- sas, February 13, 1911.
SAMUEL WESLEY FORDYCE, financier, was born in Guernsey county, Ohio, February 7, 1840. He received his early education in the public schools, in Madison College, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and at the North Illinois University. At the age of twenty he began his railway career as a station agent on the Central Ohio Railway, afterward a part of the Balti- more and Ohio system. In July, 1861, he enlisted as a private in the First Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. He was afterward assistant inspector-general of cavalry, assigned to the cavalry corps, Army of the Cumberland. The Civil war having ended, he went south and located at Huntsville, Alabama, where he established the banking houses of Fordyce & Rison. He took an active interest in polities as a Democrat, and was a member of the Alabama state central committee in 1874. He removed to Arkansas and located at Hot Springs in the early part of 1876, where he became largely inter- ested in business; was sent from Garland county as delegate to the state gubernatorial convention in 1880, and in 1884 was a delegate to the state judicial convention; was a member of the National Democratie commit- tee of Arkansas from 1884 to 1888, and a delegate to the national Demo- cratie convention at Chicago in 1884, and again in 1892. In 1881 he was made vice-president and treasurer of the Texas and St. Louis Rail- road Company ; in 1885 he was appointed receiver of the same company, and in 1886, when the company was reorganized and its name changed to St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas, he was made president. In 1889 he was again appointed receiver of the same company, and in 1891, when it was again reorganized and its name changed to the St. Louis South- western, he was re-elected president. He resigned from the presidency of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company in 1899. He was made receiver and, later, president of the Kansas City Southern Railway. He resigned from the active management of that railway, but is a director on the board. He has built and operated a great number of smaller branch lines of railway, among which were the Little Rock and Hot Springs Western, the St. Louis Valley, the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico, and quite a number of others of lesser importance. In all he has con- structed, financed and assisted in financing over ten thousand miles of railway. Realizing that the greatest good could be accomplished by a railway in a developing country, in securing the co-operation and good will of all men with whom he came in contact, he made friends with all by
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constant travel over his lines. He met his own operatives, made them feel that he had an interest in their personal welfare, and thus built up an organization that was unexcelled in even the oldest railway lines of the country. The committees of organized labor always took their troubles direet to him, and no strikes occurred even when their requests were not always granted. He knew the names and business of all his shippers, and by his advice was often able to aid in helping them build up and improve their methods. Through his banking connection he was able to advise when capital could be safely invested in meritorious enterprises, and thus lend aid to struggling concerns that have since grown into insti- tutions that are the mainstay of the railways. His acquaintance is prob- ably the largest in the Southwest. He is an honorary member of many confederate organizations. as the friendships formed when the officers of the North and South used to meet under a flag of truce during the strenu- ous times of the Civil war have endured until the present.
In addition to his railway interests he is interested in the public service corporations of Hot Springs, also in several of the hotels and bath houses. His winter home, where he lives for six months of the year, is a log cabin on top of a mountain about two miles from Hot Springs. He was married at Huntsville, Alabama, in 1866, to Susan E. Chaddiek, daughter of the Rev. Dr. William D. Chaddick. pastor of the Cumberland Presby- terian church and a colonel of an Alabama infantry regiment of the Con- federate army.
Colonel Fordyce was recently a delegate from Arkansas to the South- ern Industrial Congress at Atlanta, Georgia, and the sentiments expressed in his address before that body show better than anything else his love of his adopted state, and his pride in her development.
"Gentlemen of the Congress:
"I am glad to be here, and feel honored at being appointed by the good business Governor Donaghey, of Arkansas, to speak for this, my adopted state. This convention will emphasize, more than any event that has occurred in the last fifty years. the fact that the war is over, and will demonstrate to the world that we are again one people, all moving har- moniously together to the music of the Union, and worshipping at the shrine of the Stars and Stripes, the emblem of our National honor, courage and devotion, to the doctrine enunciated in the Declaration of Inde- pendence. This is the time, and this is the place, to say: 'All honor to the memory of the old soldiers, both living and dead, to those who fought and died for the canse they believed to be just, as well as to those who fought and died that our Nation might live.'
"With the soldier, the war was over when the last gun was fired; not so with the political demagogue, both in and out of Congress, who, like the poor, we have always with us. To these I commend the words and actions of the great Roosevelt, and to our wise and good President Taft. who has shown in many ways his National and patriotie spirit, notably by his appointment of Southern men to United States judgeships, one of whom he has honored with the appointment of Chief Justice. He is certainly both by word and action preaching peace and good will to all mankind. My hope and prayer is that we may have more men in the country broad minded and patriotie enough when the occasion requires it to rise above party for the good of the country, that at least one of the results of this Congress will be to eliminate the last shadow of bitterness that may have been caused by the events of fifty years ago, and give full force and effect to the words of the illustrious Lincoln when he said, in his first inaugural address: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not
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be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriotie grave to every living hearth and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell to the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.' Let us hope that this prophecy has now been fulfilled.
"It was the dying request of General Grant that the pallbearers at his funeral should be selected from among the officers of both the Northern and Southern armies. One of the most beautiful tributes I ever heard paid by one man to another was at a eaucus of some friends of the late Presi- dent Hayes, who had assembled for the purpose of recommending a South- ern man for his cabinet. General Sherman was one of those in attend- ance, and when asked for his advice, strongly urged the selection of General Joseph E. Johnston, and among other things said that General Johnston, was just as sincere and conscientious in his convietion of duty in espousing the cause of the Confederacy, as he (General Sherman) was in espousing the cause of the Union. That General Johnston had accepted the result of the war in good faith, and that the country was as safe in his hands as his own.
"One of the most lovable of men and wise presidents, Mckinley, who ever occupied the Presidential ehair, told me on first entering Congress in 1877 that his ambition was to live long enough to see his country united in bonds of affection and brotherly love. That no government could long endure unless founded upon the respect and confidenee of its people.
"My experience of forty-five years as a citizen of the South teaches me that the words and sentiments of these distinguished men of the North are echoed by men in the South no less patriotic than they. Most notable among these are the distinguished Georgians, the lamented gal- lant Gordon and the illustrious Grady. What a bright and happy omen is before us and our children-the country reunited in heart and hand. Verily, the year of Jubilee has come.
"For forty-nine years I have been identified with the South and South- west, as a citizen and otherwise-the otherwise as a federal officer during the unpleasantness between the states. No one realizes more than the Northern soldier that no braver or more knightly people ever went forth to battle for a cause they believed to be just; and no people ever met with more courage than they the difficult problems that confronted them on their return to their impoverished state and homes. Men and women, reared in the lap of luxury and who never wanted for money, bread or raiment, set vigorously to work with head, heart and hand, at first to gain a mere subsistence, and eventually to restore their lost fortunes. How well they have succeeded is today demonstrated by their comfortable homes, their splendid churches and schools, their material well-being, the great development in agriculture, mines, manufacture, etc. The day of the demagogue in politics is fast passing away and the people are beginning to understand that their interest lies more in the practical up- building of their respective sections than it does in giving heed to the howling politieal demagogues who seldom practice what they preach. I am inelined to think that if Shakespeare were living today he would couple polities with the word 'conscience,' and say that 'polities and con- science make cowards of us all.' Let us, however, henceforth and forever ignore the word 'Solid South,' except as used in the text that we are asked to speak to 'The Solid South of Business.'
"From choice at the close of war between the states my lot was east in the South; ten years in Alabama and thirty-five years in Arkansas. I have shared with her in her trials and tribulations during the dark days Vol. III-25
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of reconstruction, and have united with her in the upbuilding of her once down-trodden land and sorely oppressed people. I have rejoiced and shared with her in her peace, prosperity and happiness, which I trust is assured for all time.
"Forty-five years ago the same unsettled and poverty stricken condition that attached to Arkansas prevailed more or less in each of the South- ern states. Its citizens returning home from war were without money or credit. Some with very little and others with no live stock, or tools or machinery of any kind with which again to virtually commence life anew. Such a condition of affairs has rarely, if ever, confronted a once pros- perous and energetie people, but with brave hearts and willing hands they set to work to rebuild their once happy homes and to restore their lost fortunes. That they have succeeded so well and accomplished so much with so little seems today almost a miracle and commands the admira- tion of the civilized world."
JOHN H. TUOHEY. One of the progressive business men and influen- tial citizens of Little Rock, Mr. Tuohey has been a resident of the capital city since his childhood days, and he is now junior member of the firm of James Tuohey & Son, of whose business he has the active management. The firm conducts a fine grocery establishment at the corner of Twelfth and Welch streets, and the enterprise is one of the most prominent and successful of its kind in the city. Mr. Tuohey is at the present time a val- ned member of the city council, has served as representative in the lower house of the state legislature and is a member of the bar of the state, though he retired from active practice a number of years ago. He repre- sents that aggressive and enterprising spirit that has so significantly char- acterized the younger element of business men in Little Rock and that has been potent in furthering the material and civic advancement and pros- perity of the city.
Mr. Tuohey was born at Salem, Washington county, New York, on the 31st of May, 1870, and is a son of James and Mary B. (O'Neil) Tuohey, who have maintained their home in Little Rock for nearly forty years, being well-known and held in unqualified esteem in the community. Both were born in Ireland and their marriage was solemnized in the state of New York. James Tuohey came to America in 1860, and for nearly a decade he maintained his residence in Salem, New York. In 1822 he removed with his family to Arkansas and established his home in Little Rock, where through his well-directed efforts he has gained prestige as one of the leading merchants and substantial citizens of the Arkansas capital, the while his course has been so ordered as to retain to him the inviolable confidence and regard of all who know him. He has brought to bear marked energy and business acumen and he has been in the most significant sense the architect of his own fortunes, as he came to America without capitalistic reinforcement and was entirely dependent upon his own resources. Soon after his arrival in Little Rock he became associated with his brother, the late Henry Tuohey, in the establishing of a retail grocery at the corner of Fifth and Louisiana streets. In 1875 he changed the location to the southeastern residence sec- tion of the city, where the enterprise has since been successfully continued. For the past several years the large and finely appointed store has been maintained at the corner of Twelfth and Welch streets, and to the same is given a large and appreciative patronage. For thirty-eight years James Tuohey has represented the executive head of this flourishing enterprise, but he has now given over its active management to his son, John H., whose name initiates this sketch. The business has been conducted since 1895 under the title of James Tuohey & Son. James Tuohey is a man of alert
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