USA > Arkansas > Historical review of Arkansas : its commerce, industry and modern affairs > Part 68
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and Mississippi campaigns. He participated in the siege of Vicksburg, where he came with General Steele's army to Little Rock, this city being captured and occupied by the Union forces in September, 1863. Sub- sequently he was detailed for duty at Mobile, Alabama, and at the close of the war he was stationed at Brownsville, Texas, where he received his honorable discharge and was mustered out of the service. He proved a most faithful and gallant soldier and the entire period of his American citizenship has been marked by intrinsic patriotism and devotion to duty.
While in the capital city of Arkansas Mr. Kirst had become ae- quainted with the Cooper family and in 1866 he returned to Little Rock and associated himself with John M. Cooper in the establishing of a grocery store, the same being known under the firm name of Cooper & Kirst. The first headquarters of this concern were in a building on the corner of Sixth and Main streets, the present location of the Arkansas Carpet and Furniture Company. During the long intervening years Mr. Kirst has been continuously identified with this line of enterprise and his establishment is the oldest of its kind in the city. He was in partner- ship with Mr. Cooper for a period of four years, at the expiration of which he purchased a lot on the west side of Main street, between Ninth and Tenth streets, where he erected a store building which was ready for occupancy in April, 1870. His present finely equipped establishment is located at the corner of Ninth and Main streets and was constructed in 1882. Mr. Kirst has admitted his sons, Walter G. and Fred L., to partnership, and while he still gives a general supervision to the business the main responsibility for its management in more recent years has devolved upon his sons. This grocery store is notable as the best of its kind in the city and under the firm name of M. Kirst and Sons it has built up a large and representative patronage.
Mr. Michael Kirst has for over seven years represented the second ward in the city council, giving most efficient service on the finance and other important committees. He has also served as acting mayor on a number of occasions, in connection with which office he proved an able and satisfactory administrator of the municipal affairs of the city. He has contributed liberally to all measures and enterprises tending to ad- vance the general welfare of the city and state at large and as a citizen he holds secure vantage ground in the confidence and esteem of his fel- low men. Mr. Kirst retains an abiding interest in his old comrades in arms and signifies the same by his membership in the Grand Army of the Republic, in which he likewise is a member of the council of admin- istration of the national organization.
In Little Rock Mr. Kirst was united in marriage to Miss Alvina Geyer, who is a member of a pioneer family of German extraction. Mr. and Mrs. Kirst have six children, namely: Mrs. Lillie M. Gloeckler, Walter G., Annie, Mrs. Josephine Bell, Mrs. Emma Hoffman and Fred L.
JAMES F. SMITH. General Smith is a representative of one of the old and honored pioneer families of Arkansas, which has been his home from the time of his birth, and he has been a prominent figure in busi- ness affairs as well as in military and civie life. He represented the state as a valiant and loyal soldier of the Confederacy in the war be- tween the states and is at the present time division commander for Ar- kansas of the United Confederate Veterans' Association. He achieved large and definite success through his well directed energies in connec- tion with various lines of business enterprise and though he is living virtually retired he still conducts each season a large volume of business as a cotton factor. He is well known in his native state and his life
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has been such as to gain and retain to him the unqualified confidence and esteem of his fellow men. He has maintained his home in Little Rock since 1899, when he retired permanently from active mercantile business, with which he had been identified for more than a quarter of a century.
General James Fulton Smith was born at Huntsville, Madison coun- ty, Arkansas, on the 10th of October, 1843, and is a son of Benjamin and Lucretia (Lough) Smith, both of whom were born in the central part of the state of Tennessee, whence they came to Arkansas about the year 1836, establishing their home in Madison county, where both died when the subject of this review was a mere boy. General Smith was reared to maturity in Washington county, which lies adjacent to the county in which he was born, and there his educational advantages were those afforded in the common schools of the period. In June, 1861, when only seventeen years of age, General Smith enlisted in the Con- federate service at Fayetteville, where he joined Captain Mack Reif's company of scouts, with which he participated in the battle of Oak Hill. After this conflict his company was disorganized and in October, 1861, he joined a troop of cavalry under Captain William H. Brooks. It is a matter of record that Captain Reif's company of scouts fired the first gun of the war in the trans-Mississippi department, this taking place in a company of Federal troops at Dugg Springs, Missouri, about twenty- five miles south of Springfield, that state. General Smith took part in the various battles in southern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas, including those of Wilson's Creek and Elkhorn, or Pea Ridge. After the latter engagement, in March, 1862, his regiment, as a part of the command of General Price, crossed the Mississippi river, having been ordered to proceed to Shiloh, a point which they reached one day after the memorable hattle bearing that name. They subsequently took part in the battles of. Farmington, Inka, Grand Gulf, Corinth and Davis Bridge. General Smith was also with his command at the siege of Vicksburg and assisted in defending that city until its capitulation on the 4th of July, 1863. He was there captured and after his parole he returned with his command to Arkansas, where he then entered into service in the trans-Mississippi department, with which he was thus identified until the close of the war. He took part in General Price's furious raid into Missonri and at the close of the war he was with his command in the Red river country, near Fulton, Arkansas. His regi- ment was the first battalion of Arkansas cavalry commanded by Colonel Stirman. General Smith proved a most faithful and gallant soldier, and he was promoted to the office of captain, an unusual distinction for so young a man. His military record is one that redounds to his credit as a loyal supporter of the "lost cause." He has ever maintained a most lively interest in his old comrades of the Civil war and has given his aid and infinence in support of all measures for their benefit. He has been a most active factor in the affairs of the United Confederate Veterans' Association, in which he has held the office of division com- mander of the department of Arkansas, with the rank of major general, for some years. This distinctive preferment in the gift of his old com- rades well indicates the high regard in which he is held by them. The General is a staunch advocate of the principles and policies for which the Democratic party stands sponsor, but has never been a seeker of office, though essentially loyal to the civic duties and responsibilities. He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity. and both he and his wife are active members of the Cumberland Presbyterian church.
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After the close of the war General Smith located in southern Ar- kansas, and for more than a quarter of a century he was a successful and prominent merchant, planter and cotton buyer at Mineral Springs and Nashville, this state, where he acquired many valuable interests, many of which he still retains. In 1899 he removed to Little Rock, where he is passing the gracious evening of his life amidst comforts and pleas- ing surroundings that are the just reward of former years of earnest toil and endeavor. He is still engaged in the buying of cotton and each season handles a large amount of business in this line. In 1909 he erected his splendid modern residence, at the corner of Ninth and Bat- tery streets, which occupies one of the most beautiful sites in the Ar- kansas capital, the same commanding a splendid view of the entire western portion of the city. This beautiful home is recognized as a cen- ter of gracious and refined hospitality and is a favored rendezvous for the wide circle of friends the General and his wife have drawn about then.
General Smith was united in marriage with Miss Catherine Green, who was born at Rocky Comfort, this state. Mrs. Smith organized the first chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Arkansas. and was twice president of the state organization. She is a woman of most gracious personality and is a valued factor in connection with the best social activities of her home state.
THOMAS T. DICKINSON. One of the able younger members of the bar of his native state, Mr. Dickinson is engaged in the practice of his profession in the city of Little Rock and is well entitled to consideration in this publication. He was born in Calhoun county, this state, his father being numbered among the sterling pioneers of that county, where he was long and prominently identified with agricultural pursuits. The parents now reside in Little Rock, whither they removed in order to afford their children better educational advantages.
Thomas T. Dickinson gained his early educational training in the public schools of Calhoun county and in the city of Little Rock and later entered the literary department of the University of Arkansas, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1901, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In the meantime he had also prosecuted a technical course in the law department of the university and in this department he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1902. For nearly a year after his graduation Mr. Diekinson held the office of librarian of the Supreme Court of the state and since the spring of 1903 he has been established in the successful practice of his pro- fession in the capital city of his native state, where he has shown marked ability as a trial lawyer and as a well fortified counselor. He is a staunch supporter of the cause of the Democratic party, and is identi- fied with various social and fraternal organizations of a representative order. Mr. Dickinson is a bachelor.
WALTER A. ARCHER. A keen. wide-awake man of affairs, energetic and progressive, Walter A. Archer, secretary and general manager of the Archer Lumber Company, at Helena, Phillips county, has had a long and varied experience with the lumber interests of Tennessee and Arkansas, and is thoroughly conversant with its demands. He was born. March 24, 1869, on a Tennessee farm, and was bred and educated in that state. As a boy of fifteen years he began working in lumber camps. and has continued as a lumberman until the present time, having filled positions of all kinds in connection with the pursuit. In 1895 Mr.
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Archer located in Phillips county, Arkansas, and during the next twelve or more years was the traveling representative and inspector for one of Helena's largest and most important lumber concerns.
In January, 1908, the Archer Lumber Company, of Helena, was organized, and Mr. Archer was elected its secretary and manager, a position for which his familiarity with the business and its requirements made him especially adapted. The company has been eminently suc- cessful from the start, and in February, 1910, its original capital, which was one hundred thousand dollars, was increased to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, an increase warranted by its extensive operations, for while this concern is not now classed among the very largest in the state it has fair prospects of soon attaining that distinction. The Archer Lumber Company handles hardwood lumber exclusively, and has re- cently installed a gluing-up plant for preparing and finishing up lumber for use in furniture factories, being the only company in the state to operate such a plant. The firm likewise has extensive dry kilns for curing lumber, and is well supplied with all of the latest and most ap- proved modern machinery and equipments for carrying on its business, which is both with the retail and wholesale trade.
Mr. Archer married, in 1901, Tenia Scott, daughter of J. W. Scott, a leading merchant of Halls, Tennessee, and to them four children have been born, namely : Mary, Fay. Elizabeth and Katherine. Fraternally Mr. Archer belongs to the Knights of Pythias and to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
DR. WILLIAM E. GREEN, a son of Richard E. and Frances J. (Davis) Green, was born at Charlestown, Clark county, Indiana, March 18, 1845. His father was a farmer in Indiana and later a merchant in Kansas City, Missouri, where he died in the year 1894; his mother, now aged eighty- seven, is still living. Dr. Green's early education was received in the public schools of his native village, but, the Civil war commencing, his father and elder brother enlisted in the Federal army, leaving him the only male support of the family, and he had to work early and late on the farm, cultivating crops and supplying fuel and other necessaries of life, which prevented him from continuing his studies.
There was an organization of Home Guards in the state, and as all of the able-bodied men had gone to the army in the field this military organization was composed principally of old men and boys. Dr. Green was the smallest member of his company, and when they lined up in marching order he was the last man at the foot of the company. When General Bragg's army invaded Kentucky and laid siege to Louisville in the fall of 1862 the Home Guards were ordered to take the field, and the regiment to which Dr. Green belonged was stationed at Jeffersonville and did military duty there, but the attack that was daily expected never came, and the troops returned home after Bragg's forces were driven away.
After his father had returned home in the fall of 1863, having served his term of enlistment with the Ninth Kentucky Cavalry, Dr. Green went south with the army and served in the quartermaster's department in dif- ferent capacities. Early in the summer of 1864 he joined a company of independent cavalry in the service of Captain Kellogg, quartermaster at Nashville, Tennessee, and performed scouting duty through Tennessee and Kentucky. The company made a trip to Sherman's army, and was at the front during the siege of Atlanta. Dr. Green's term of enlistment expired in the fall of 1864, when he returned to Nashville and joined the Fifth division of the Construction Corps, and was sent to Johnson-
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ville, Tennessee, Sherman's base of supplies on the Tennessee river, and was there during the attack on the town by Forrest, which lasted three days.
At the close of the war, in the spring of 1865, Dr. Green returned home and entered Barnett's Academy and, after finishing his studies in this institution, was for five years a successful and popular teacher in the public schools of his native state.
To prepare himself for the work of his chosen profession he entered the Eclectic Medical Institute in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, from which he was graduated in the class of 1872, and from which he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He had, in the meantime, become greatly impressed with the principles of homeopathy, and to further equip him- self for his chosen vocation he entered the Pulte Medical College, of Cincinnati, from which he was graduated in 1873 with the supplemental degree of Doctor of Medicine. He also attended a full two years' course of clinical instruction in the Cincinnati City Hospital, anatomy and surgery receiving special attention.
In the spring of 1873 he came to Arkansas and established his per- manent residence in Little Rock. In a way he was a pioneer in the state, for while other physicians of his school had preceded him their residence was of short duration, and he was the first to establish himself in prac- tice and give homœopathy a creditable standing. Singlehanded and alone, against the most bitter opposition (from the adherents of the dominant school), by his untiring energy, close application and rare ability he soon acquired a large clientele among the representative people of Little Rock, and the succeeding years tell the story of a most successful career in one of the most important professions to which a man may devote his ener- gies.
Dr. Green has always kept to the front in both medieal and surgical practice. To be satisfied with nothing short of the best has been his chief characteristic, and this trait has found expression, not only in his professional work, but in all the relations of life. Enjoying throughout a long professional career an extensive practice among the representative classes, he has permitted no cry of distress from the poor to go unheeded, but when called upon has given to them the same considerate and un- remitting care accorded to his richer patrons.
Although he has conducted a general practice, Dr. Green has achieved notable success in both medicine and surgery and in some things has been a pioneer, not only in Arkansas, but on the American continent.
His proving of the drug Onosmodium Virginianum has been recog- nized officially by the Homoeopathic School and appears in all of the more complete materia medicas of that practice.
But it is in surgery that his most distinctive success has been at- tained. To him belongs the credit for having performed the first suc- cessful operation for removal of the ovaries and the first operation for appendicitis done in the state of Arkansas, the first reported vaginal hysterectomy done south of Mason and Dixon's line and the first ab- dominal seetion for pelvic abscess done on the continent of America. An account of the latter operation was published in the Hahnemannian Monthly of Philadelphia in August, 1883, antedating that of Dr. R. S. Sutton, who has been given priority, by ten months. The doctor has contributed largely to the homeopathic medical journals and wrote the section on the digestive system in the homoeopathic text-book of surgery, which for many years was the standard text-book on surgery in the homeopathie school. His articles, while of a scientific character, are eminently lucid .and practical.
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He is a member of the American Institute of Homoeopathy, has regularly attended its annual meetings since 1882, and has been its first vice president and president. He has also served as president of the Southern Homoeopathic Medical Association, president of the American Association of Orificial Surgeons, president of the National Association of Surgeons and Gynecologists. He has been an active worker in the Arkansas State and Pulaski County Homoeopathic Medical Societies, of both of which he has been president. He was for twelve years secretary of the Arkansas State Board of Medical Examiners, and, at the time of this writing, is serving as president of the Homeopathic State Board of Med- ical Examiners. He served four years on the United States Board of Pension Examiners. He has been for twenty-eight years physician to the children's home in the city of Little Rock, and is now, and has been for several years, physician for the United States prisoners.
Having very little time for social affairs, he, nevertheless, enjoys unequivocal popularity in his home city, where he has shown a deep in- terest in all that touches the social and material welfare of the com- munity, but he has allowed nothing to deflect him from an assiduous de- votion to the medical profession, in which he has achieved such signal distinction.
He was married in 1889 to Miss Adelaide Elizabeth Ward, daughter of Colonel Zeb. Ward, of Kentucky, and has two children, Irma Green Gar- nett and William E. Green, Jr.
SAMUEL L. COOKE. To be a great and successful business man in this competitive age bespeaks a rare combination of qualities, many of which are clearly apparent in the personality of the gentleman whose name we take pleasure in placing at the head of this brief sketch. Mr. Cooke was born in Mississippi, October 11, 1858, and in 1871 came to Arkansas with his parents, who settled on a plantation near Marvell, Phillips county.
Embarking upon a business career at Marvell in 1889, Mr. Cooke's snecess has been constant and assured, coming from the keen foresight, untiring energy and sound judgment that has ever characterized his operations. Hle is now one of the largest general merehants in this see- tion of the county, being president of the Cooke Brothers Mercantile Company, which is carrying on a substantial trade. He is also a stock- holder in the wholesale grocery firm of the Robinson & Swift Company, and is interested with his brother. V. E. Cooke, in a general store at Cypert, Arkansas.
A man of financial prominence, Mr. Cooke has served as president of the Bank of Marvell sinee its organization, in 1902, and has been largely influential in plaeing it among the leading institutions of the kind in the county. Still actively interested in the free and independent pursnit to which he was reared. Mr. Cooke is an extensive cotton faetor and grower. A man of his mental attainments and public-spirit is naturally active in the management of public affairs. and he has three been elected to the state legislature, where he served his constituents wisely and well, ably and faithfully caring for their interests.
Mr. Cooke married, in 1890, Miss Laura Thompson, of Marvell.
DANIEL MOGANHEY has the distinction of being one of the leading real estate dealers of Stuttgart. He is also one of the best-known lodge men in the thriving eity which has been the scene of his residenee for some eight years, and through the channel of his affiliation with several important organizations comes a part of his wide aequaintanee in this
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part of the state and county. Mr. MeGahhey is a Southerner by birth, his arrival upon this mundane sphere having been at Rutherford, North Carolina, on May 23, 1868.
When the subject was a lad his parents removed to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and his early educational discipline was secured in the public schools of that city. In 1886, when he was about eighteen years of age, he concluded to cast his youthful fortunes with the state of Arkansas and in December of that year he came to Grand Prairie, near Gillett, and for the ensuing eight years engaged in farming and the cattle busi- ness. He then made a radical change of occupation by taking up the real estate business in Gillett, and in that center he engaged in land dealings for several years. He made his change of residence to Stuttgart in March, 1902, and his occupation in the ensuing years has been in real estate. He enjoys high prestige among the business men of the city and he has by no means played a passive part in the development of Arkansas county.
There are certain men in whom the social and fraternal inelina- tions are highly developed and who find great pleasure in the exchange of cordialities with their fellow men, and Mr. MeGahhey is one of this fortunate number. He belongs, first and foremost, to the great Masonic order, being affiliated with the Mystic Shrine and the Knights Templar, and he is also a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World.
On September 17, 1891, Mr. MeGahhey assumed marital relations, the lady to become his wife and the mistress of his household being Miss Anna Evans, of Gillett, a native of Fulton county, Illinois. The sub- ject and his wife have two sons and a daughter, whose names are Albert, Erving and Emma Margaret.
LOUIS K. MENARD. Whatever else may be said of the legal fra- ternity, it cannot be denied that members of the bar have been more prominent actors in public affairs than any other class of the community. This is but the natural result of causes which are prima facie. The ability and training which qualify one to practice law also qualify him in many respects for duties which lie outside the strict path of his pro- fession and which touch the general interests of society. Among the alert, progressive and public-spirited representatives of the profession who make Dewitt the scene of their activities is Lonis K. Menard, who is still to be accounted of the younger generation.
Mr. Menard, who is gratifyingly loyal to the state of Arkansas, is particularly bound to it by the primary tie of birth within its borders, the date of his nativity being October 5, 1876, and the scene of that event Arkansas county. Mr. Menard early in life came to the conclu- sion to adopt the law as a profession. He had previously enjoyed the advantages of a good general education in Hendricks College, Conway, Arkansas, and he began the preparation for his profession by a course of reading in the office of John F. Park, of Dewitt. He was admitted to the bar in the month of November, 1904, and has practiced in Dewitt since July, 1906, building up a substantial practice and becoming, through his own unaided efforts, one of the widely recognized members of the Arkansas bar. Distinctive mark of the strong hold he had gained in popular esteem in the community was given in his election to the office of mayor, and in this important publie capacity he gave efficient service for one term.
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