Tag Archives: Wolfinbarger

ES Independent Column – Pearl Tatman

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I don’t have many prized possessions, but one I do have is an old wooden chair with a hinged back, a kind of antique recliner. I like the chair, but part of what makes it special is that it once belonged to Dr. Pearl Tatman. You’ve probably heard of Dr. Pearl or seen her house at 265 Spring Street.

She first came to town as Dr. Pearl Hale in the late 1800s. She was born in New Hampshire and is said to initially have had a difficult time being accepted as a female doctor, but stuck with it and established a flourishing medical practice. She became known for her compassion and hard work. She took many maternity cases and brought a whole generation of Eurekans into this world.

Not long after her arrival, an Iowa-born pharmacist named Albert Evans Tatman came to Eureka Springs. They fell in love and married. She encouraged him to pursue his dream of also becoming a physician: Albert attended the Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery in Atlanta. The Tatmans adopted a daughter named Daisy, who later married Clyde Perkins. Albert died of heart disease in 1925 and after his death, Dr. Pearl began buying land on Onyx Cave Road until she had a farm of several hundred acres.

By the 1940 census, Pearl Tatman was in her late 60s, living on her farm and working 20 hours per week as a medical doctor. She had fallen and broken a hip and had trouble getting around without a cane. The census report also listed two others of her household, her “unadopted daughter” Laura O’Connor and farmhand Tillman Wolfinbarger. Dr. Pearl died in April of 1944 and left $100 and her property inside the city limits of Eureka Springs to Daisy Perkins. Everything else was left to Laura O’Connor.

To be honest, I first became interested in Dr. Pearl because on January 2, 1921, she was in a house at the top of Magnetic Hollow with her medicine bag delivering my grandfather, McKinley Weems, but I was soon impressed with the legacy left by this strong woman. And I have her chair.

Eureka Springs Independent Column – Granny

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A quiet and shy girl, Betty Southerland was born on the last day of 1914 in the remote Mason Bend of Kings River located between Eureka Springs and Rockhouse. Her education started at the tiny Cedar Grove School located on her father’s farm just a short walk from the log house in which she was born. The school was comprised of Betty and her siblings and the children of a couple other farm families.

Betty’s isolated existence was expanded when the decision was made to consolidate her school with the larger West Concord School District closer to Eureka Springs. A nervous wreck at the thought of the change, Betty now travelled six miles every morning to attend the unfamiliar school. Little did she know that it was at Concord  that she would become dear friends with schoolmate Dorothy Wolfinbarger.

The Concord School was located on Rockhouse Road near Keels Creek where the Concord Fire Station now stands. Behind it loomed a bald knob that is now being covered by cedars. My understanding is that the view from the top is borderline spectacular, but that isn’t why Betty and Dorothy would climb the steep trail. No, they climbed that steep mountain because the acoustics were so good. As was the rage at the time, both girls yodeled and they would make the rugged trek to the top to do so. They’d yodel together or take turns and then listen as their voices bounced around and echoed back. They’d shout or sing songs and listen.

Betty was my “Granny,” my mother’s mother, and I used to badger her for stories. Several times she told me about her school closing, but she would then recall Dorothy with as much affection as anyone I ever heard her talk about. When Granny would recount this story, it was with a fondness and wistfulness I rarely saw her display when she recollected the events of her physically hard life. The power of childhood friendships came to mind recently with the news that Dorothy had passed away at the age of 98. (Incidentally, Dorothy was the sister of my paternal grandmother Lola Weems.)

Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper Column for June 18, 2014 by Steve Weems

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McKinley Weems remembers as a boy the first time he saw Lola Wolfinbarger. His family was traveling to a burial at the Rockhouse Cemetery and stopped at the Wolfinbarger house. Lola and her sisters were in the yard.

On June 18, 1939, McKinley Weems and Lola Wolfinbarger of Eureka Springs were married. They both come from families where you count your cousins by the dozen. Mac was the eighth of the nine children of Walter and Luella (Pinkley) Weems. He was born and raised on Magnetic Road, except for when the springs were dry during the Great Depression and they lived next door to Aunt Cora Pinkley-Call in town.

Lola was the seventh of ten children born to Arl and Mary Lula (Cordell) Wolfinbarger. She was born and raised near Keels Creek southeast of Eureka Springs.

With the exception of the war years, they’ve always lived on the outskirts of Eureka Springs. They were away during the war when their first home burned down. When they returned they purchased the house at 1 Magnetic for $75 and lived there for almost 20 years. With a small house and a growing family, they built a new home to accommodate their eight children.

With so many mouths to feed, they’ve sometimes had to scramble to make ends meet. McKinley has been fixing and building things since his first job in 1934 at Mac Hussey’s garage on Main Street. He worked on radios and refrigerators for Ray Freeman and Eagle Thomas, before buying a bulldozer.

A farm girl, Lola has always known work. Besides farm work, she ran traps and sold animal skins before marriage. Since then she has raised children and gardens and owned and operated Country Antiques for nearly 40 years.

They’ve continued the tradition of having cousins by the dozen, with about 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren thus far. They’ve enjoyed the benefits of the large family, but they’ve also endured the loss of three children, two grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Today, they celebrate the 75th anniversary of their marriage. It is called a “Diamond Anniversary.” I looked it up.

Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper Column for April 16, 2014

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For several years there was a Glenn Swedlun painting of Keels Creek for sale by an art dealer in West Virginia. I’d seen it on the Internet and it would pop up on eBay periodically. Several branches of my family have long had connections to the Keels Creek area, and my father particularly remembered idyllic childhood summers and weekends at the Wolfinbarger farm. It isn’t often I have the energy to covet something, but I coveted that painting.

After a short career as a professional baseball player, Glenn Swedlun turned to art for his livelihood. He had been taught painting by his father, landscape artist Fred Swedlun. They eventually had shop space on Spring Street in which to show their work.

I’ve been told the story that Glenn and Fred would ride buses out of Chicago looking for landscapes to paint. After a stop in Eureka Springs they decided that they’d found a lifetime’s worth of source material in the Ozarks.

In the 1960s, Wayne Mote wrote in the Oklahoman Magazine that Glenn Swedlun was completing a mind-boggling 125 canvases a year. It was hard work.

I’ve also been told that a favorite process of Glenn’s was to go out and tromp around in the hills until he found something that he wanted to paint. Then he would spend several hours looking the scene over, watching the light change, memorizing. He would return to his studio and paint the scene.

In 1974, the Eureka Springs Times-Echo quoted Glenn Swedlun as saying, “If a man lives to be 500 years old, he would learn something new about art every day. When you stop being a student who continually probes into the unknown, you stop growing as an artist. The older you get, the more you realize you’re still just scratching the surface.”

When my wife was a little girl, Glenn Swedlun bought his gas at O’Connor’s Texaco and he would always give her a quarter. Later, when she won an elementary school art contest, he heard about it and gave her copies of his notes on various aspects of painting and drawing. By all accounts, Glenn Swedlun was a good guy.

Great-Aunt Opha Wolfinbarger Price

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Opha Wolfinbarger Price

Opha Price died August 12, 2008 at the age of 86. One of eight children born to Arlie and Mary Lula Cordell Wolfinbarger, she attended school at Concord School and had two sons, David and Russell. Aunt Opha was buried today at the Shady Grove Cemetary. She was one of my wife’s favorite Sunday School teacher’s years ago. She was my grandmother’s older sister and a wonderful, sweet lady. I once gave her a kitten.