Tag Archives: Keels Creek

ES Independent Column – David Worley Redux

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I’ve walked around the Shady Grove Cemetery between Eureka Springs and Berryville numerous times looking at tombstones and the names inscribed. It is impossible to do so without noticing that two of this area’s most historic families, the Worleys and the Gentrys, are amply represented. Two men buried in the cemetery are David Worley and William Wesley Gentry.

I recently wrote about David Worley based on a short article that ran in several regional newspapers in the year 1902. It said in part, “Eureka Springs, Ark., April 29 – Dave Worley, 85 years old, grandfather and great grandsire to more than a hundred living persons, died at his home on Keels Creek, five miles south of here, Sunday.”

I expressed some confusion as the article’s information didn’t match what I thought I knew about Mr. Worley. Paula Breid kindly alerted me that this very topic had been extensively researched by sisters Lucy Johnson Kell and June Johnson Westphal. They wrote about their findings in an article titled “Our Elusive David Worley” in the June 2001 edition of the Carroll County Historical Quarterly.

What they found is that the newspaper reporter had likely confused the particulars of two different deaths that occurred in the Keels Creek area within a few days of each other. William Wesley Gentry also died in April 1902 and the details of his life and family closely match those of the newspaper article.

Mr. Gentry would have been nearly 85 at the time of his death, while David Worley was only 63. Also, the man in the newspaper article is said to be the “grandfather and great grandsire to more than a hundred living persons.” Records show that David Worley had 16 grandchildren at the time of his death, all under the age of 13. William Wesley Gentry, on the other hand, is said to have had 62 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.

These elements and other evidence uncovered by Lucy Kell and June Westphal seems to conclusively solve the mystery and confusion caused by the original 1902 article that landed on the front pages of newspapers from Little Rock to St. Louis.

ES Independent Column – David Worley

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While doing some research, I came across this short article that ran in newspapers from St. Louis to Little Rock in the year 1902:

“Eureka Springs, Ark., April 29 – Dave Worley, 85 years old, grandfather and great grandsire to more than a hundred living persons, died at his home on Keels Creek, five miles south of here, Sunday. He had fifteen children by his first wife and nine by his second. In the funeral train was a wagon in which rode one of his granddaughters with ten of her children ranging from one to twelve years. The remainder of them were compelled to find other accommodations. Fifteen years before the war, Uncle Dave was a slayer of bears and trapper of wide renown throughout North Arkansas.”

When I was a teenager, Jack McCall gave me some catnip and told me to give it to the young cat that I’d recently adopted at the Good Shepherd Humane Society. Miss Kitty still ranks as my favorite cat. Grandpa Jack meant for the catnip to be a treat for her, and it certainly was. She swooned and purred and didn’t know what to do with herself. I didn’t get quite that excited after finding this article, but almost.

But as tantalizing as this information is, I don’t know what to do with it because it doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. There is a David Worley buried in the Shady Grove Cemetery, but he was only 63 at death. He married a relation of mine, Jemimah Harp at Cassville, Mo., in 1865. He’d recently returned to the Ozarks after being released as a prisoner of war in Georgia. This David Worley only had eight children of his own that I’ve been able to trace, though he did gain an additional seven step-children when he remarried after Jemimah’s death. I’ve never been able to come up with the name of his parents, so the Uncle Dave Worley of the article could be his father. Or uncle.

Either way, the “slayer of bears” sounds like quite an interesting character.

ES Independent Column – Keels Creek

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Many of the stories I grew up on featured Keels Creek as a recurring landmark. Obviously, this was because various branches of my family either lived on Keels Creek or not too far from it. I’ve always thought it interesting that Keels Creek was named for an early pioneer’s first name: Keel Williams.

I suppose many people only see Keels Creek from the bridge on Rockhouse Road, and much of the time there is no water to be seen because it runs under the surface gravel. Don’t let the lack of visible water fool you, though, because the Keels Creek watershed covers 19,211 acres of land south of Eureka Springs. That is 30 square miles of springs and creeks and rainfall to drain.

One of my favorite Keels Creek stories involves my wife’s great-great grandfather, Murrell Nelson. He had a big place on Keels Creek on the Madison County line (southeast of the present day Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge). He had bought the land in pieces from Claude Fuller and others in 1916 when he returned home from California where he had worked for the railroads.

Late in life, Murrell had to move fifty head of cattle from his farm to Berryville. The cattle drive followed Keels Creek eight miles, before fording both the Kings River and the Osage. The destination farm was located behind the present day  Maverick Supply. One just doesn’t hear of long cattle drives in Carroll County anymore. It would be a logistical nightmare.

A whole book could be written about M.D. Nelson and overcoming adversity. When he was 7 years old his father (who had returned from the Civil War in one piece) was murdered by a horse thief on his Carroll County farm. After that, Murrell bounced around living and working for various people. He married Nancy Johnson in 1890 and farmed south of Eureka Springs after homesteading 160 acres in the Buck Mountain area. He then sold out and went to California to make his fortune.

Murrell Dixon Nelson died in the Eureka Springs Hospital in 1953 and is buried in the Eureka Springs Cemetery.

ES Independent Column – Alex Weems

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Alex Weems was born a farm boy in the green hills of east Tennessee. During the Civil War, he lied about his age and joined the Union Army at 14 years old. His cavalry unit was embroiled in three years of combat in several different states. Records indicate that Alex’s lifetime of poor health was linked to his time in the army. After the war, he returned to farming and married his sweetheart Margarett. Times were hard in Tennessee, so the family moved  several times, ending up in Salem, Kansas near the Nebraska border.

The harsh winter weather on the plains was difficult for Alex. The Weems family lived there when the Great Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888 hit. The storm was especially destructive because the weather had been mild and many were caught unprepared. It is reported that hundreds became lost in whiteout conditions and froze to death, including many children who had been released from school just as the blizzard hit.

At the age of 42, Alex was declared an invalid by the War Department. Life continued though and not for the best. Alex and Margarett’s oldest son James died and was buried at Salem.

More than ready to leave this area of Kansas that had held so much difficulty, Alex got a break. A man by the name of Horton traveling through the area stopped and met Alex Weems and they got to talking. The man had an 80 acre farm on Keels Creek in Carroll County, Arkansas. The Ozarks must have sounded like the hills of Alex’s childhood. He traded his farm in Kansas for the farm near Eureka Springs sight unseen.

Alex and Margarett and their eight children travelled to Arkansas and settled into life on Keels Creek. Two more children were added to the crowded household and the older ones attended the Concord School. They later married into local families. Alex sold the farm to France Johnson in 1911 and the family moved to town. Alex and Margarett are buried in the Eureka Springs Cemetery.

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.

Turn Around – Don’t Drown

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Here in the hollow we’ve received about ten inches of rain in the past week. That is a lot of water. It manifests itself in our normally placid springs roaring with anger and temporary creeks appearing in unexpected places. All of this water heads for Keels Creek and then makes a left-hand turn into the Kings River.

The USGS monitors the Kings River at the Grandview Bridge not too far from here. It’s not unusual for the river to be knee deep at this spot. Three days ago the river crested at 35.47 feet at the Grandview Bridge, the 5th highest depth on record.

We observed the river from the bridge when it was about 27 feet deep and it was a muddy, rolling sight to behold. My understanding is that the bridge went underwater when the river crested and the highway was closed. The slogan used for times like that is “Turn Around – Don’t Drown.”

West Concord School No. 48

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Concord School House in the summer of 2002. Photograph by Mary Weems

For 116 years the Concord School House stood where it was built near the banks of Keels Creek on land originally donated by the Masters family. Both of my grandmothers, Lola Wolfinbarger-Weems and Betty Southerland-McCall, attended school in what was officially known as the “West Concord School No. 48.”

The Concord School House was a center of community life in the Keels Creek valley. Circuit preachers of various denominations came through and held church services, citizens attended political rallies there and then came back on another day and voted in the same building, concerts were held, meetings on new agriculture techniques, and various fund raisers, like pie suppers, were common.
In 1948, the Concord School House was forced to close by legislation out of distant Little Rock and the building sold to the highest bidder. I’ve been told that it then stood empty (except for the hay stored there) for the next 54 years.

In early 2002, Eureka Springs Fire Chief David Stoppel announced that Dan and Monica Ryan, who had come to own the old Concord School House, were going to donate the land there for the construction of a much needed rural fire association substation.  The Ryans did hope, however, that the historic building could be saved by relocation and encouraged those interested to contact them.

Shortly thereafter I did have a long, enjoyable conversation about Concord with Dan Ryan, emails to and from David Stoppel, and met with some house movers.  Luckily, there were others interested in saving the school house – I certainly didn’t have the resources to do it.  Ultimately, the Masters family moved the Concord School House to its current location and did a wonderful job renovating it.
Now the Concord School House stands on a high spot on a ridge overlooking the beautiful “Hull Valley” just outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, on County Road 309 (or Rocky Top Road.) If you haven’t seen it, it’s certainly worth the drive.