Fine's Springs is a small community
located in Crawford Co Arkansas along US 71 Hwy
about 4 miles north of Alma named after my 2 great
grandparents
Jonathan and Rachael Fine,
before that time the area was known as Tarrytown. The springs for which
it is named are on private property, posted, and not
open to the public.
I am certain no one alive today knows the full and complete
story about this place but I may have a unique
perspective as I am not only the grandson-in-law of
Ethel Plum the celebrated correspondent for the Press
Argus and it is her articles that most researchers look
to for authority, but I spent the first 19 years of my
life in the community, living less than a mile from the
springs and I am a retired Chief Criminal Investigator
for Washington County and I have investigated
successfully about two dozen homicides so I have a
experience conducting investigations. None of this
makes me right, but I bring a different set of tools to the
table, I ask different questions and rarely accept
something solely because someone says it is so. I
look for the same proof that I sought when I had to go
before a jury and I have an interest because
Jonathan and Rachael Fine and
their son
Walter and Nancy Fine are
my great grandparents several generations removed.
When I look at the census, I see names that I associate
with certain locations around the community when I was a
child. Maybe these families were still living in
their ancestor's places and maybe they were not but that
is part of the mystery to be unraveled.
The Murder of Mormon Prophet Parley Parker Pratt
I don't think it proper to mention the history
of Fine's Springs and leave out the murder and burial
of Mormon Prophet
Parley Parker Pratt.
It is unclear
if Pratt's murder occurred just before or just after
Jonathan and Rachael Fine moved from West Fork Washington Co
Arkansas to the springs that even today continues to
bear their name. Most people love a good mystery
and Fine's Springs still holds a 150 year old murder
mystery and the Fines and Parley Pratt are forever
linked to this tiny place. To the Mormons
Parley Parker Pratt
was one of their 12 apostles, to many in Crawford County
then and to some even now, he was a wife stealer and
deserved his fate. Being a retired law enforcement
officer I feel no one deserves to be murdered, everyone
deserves due process and McLean and Pratt had theirs and
that should have been the end of it but it didn't turn
out that way.
Ethel reports that the
Fines had camped at the
place that is today known as Fine's Springs on their way back from Texas
sometime just before or after Pratt's murder. So who was there
before they came? On the 1840 Crawford County
Mountain Township US Census I find a Zearlie McWinn and a
Josiah Wynn and his wife
Caroline, and the Winns are assumed to have lived at the springs because
a family cemetery was established and it is the place where one of Zealie's grandchild's
name appears on the sole lonely gravestone but that
cemetery is
more famous as the place where it is said Mormon Prophet
Parley Parker Pratt is buried and it is also claimed that
Zealie and two wives are buried there under plain rock markers.
Josiah Wynn was likely
a brother of Zealie, Josiah was a
Justice of the Peace for Lafayette Township and
justices were normally men of property and influence.
Living at Fine's Springs from the early 1950s until 1972
I knew of the Pratt's gravesite. In my childhood
we were told that Parley encouraged a married woman to
leave her husband and become one of his wives and that
was at the heart of this deadly conflict. Then as
now many men including I am told Mormon men see their
wives as their personal property, like a car, or a dog,
or a cow, wives are theirs to command so the reference I
sometimes would hear was Parley was a "wife stealer"
putting him in the same group as a "horse thief" or
a "cattle rustler". Not once have I read someone on
either side saying that Eleanor was a grown woman with a
mind of her own and she decided she no longer wanted to
be with Hector McLean and she did want to be with Parley
Parker Pratt, even today that seems to be lost on both
side, those on McLean' side claim Parley received what
he deserved while those on the Mormon side defend Parley
by demonizing Mclean as a drunk and a wife beater and
neither opinions matters, it was what Eleanor choose that
mattered so even after 150 years neither side can just
accept that it wasn't up to Parley Pratt or Hector
McLean, it was up to Eleanor; all wives, non
Mormon and Mormon should decided their future, that
isn't a right given to their husbands no matter how many
husbands they may have.
In brief, a charge was made against
Parley Parker Pratt,
he was arrested and hauled before a Federal Judge at Van
Buren Crawford Co Arkansas, and
Judge John B Ogden acquitted him of the charges and
it has been claimed he gave him a horse and offered him
a handgun and a knife but Parley refused the weapons
claiming God would be his defender overlooking the
possibility that it may have been God who was directing
Judge Ogden to make the offer of the weapons for
Parley's defense. So with his armor of God to
protect him, why didn't Parley if really believed what
he was witnessing why didn't he put his faith in God and
stand his ground at Van Buren and allowed his faith to
protect him? I am of the opinion this is the flaw
in most ministers' sermons, they tell you to put your
faith in God yet when given the opportunity they don't; Parley chose what most
people would do, he took the horse that was offered
and fled for his mortal life and it appears he must have
taken the now extinct Van Buren to Belmont road, a road
that went almost as the crow would fly from Van Buren to
Fine Springs as the US 71 route did not exist as it does
to and it is said
that at a fork in the road likely somewhere near Fine's Springs his
pursuers caught up to him or ambushed him and Hector
McLean struck a mortal blow. Like most cowardly
criminals, Hector McLean fled the scene and boarded a
riverboat at Van Buren and left the area. If
Hector believed he was in the right why didn't he stand
his ground and put his fate in a jury of his peers?
I find it ironic that he did exactly as
Parley Parker Pratt
did, he too fled for his life. I don't find a
martyr in this story as most Mormons claim, this was just another case of two
men fighting over a woman and the fight escalated till
one killed the other, it happens all the time but this
time it was said to have happened on a road near Fine's
Springs.
The Mormons in their telling of the murder of
Parley Parker Pratt claim that it
was Zealie Winn who operated a
blacksmith shop near the fork in the road where Parley
was said to have been attacked who heard the commotion
and came to investigate and found Parley setting at the
base of a tree barely alive. Zealie is said to
have given him water and provided comfort as
Parley died. Parley Pratt's last sip of water may have
came from the springs that we know today as Fine
Springs, it has been said it was the public source for
pure clear water so who knows for certain that Zealie
didn't dispatch a son or a grandson to fetch the cool
fresh water from the springs that day to provide a dying
man a little comfort. Who can say that did not
happen just that way? Maybe it did, or perhaps the
murder was too far from the springs for Fine Springs to
pay that role. The fog of time prevents us from
knowing.
In the 1850 Lafayette Township Census we find James
Ormes and Zearlie Winn recorded one after the the other
so they seem to be living side by side but depending on
how much acreages these two men owned would determine
how close they may have lived. They could have
lived a mile apart or next door, there might not be a
way to know. In 1857 it is claimed that James Orme
was the Justice of the Peace for Lafayette Township and
he conducted the inquest into the death of Parley Pratt
death and the service for his burial because no minister
would. It should be noted that Zearlie nor James Ormes
appear in the 1860 US Census for Lafayette and I find
that both are missing just three years after the murder
of Parley Pratt curious. I am told the Mormons now own the Winn cemetery,
I haven't verified such but in my childhood memory only one grave was ever
marked by an engraved stone, all the rest maybe a dozen
graves were marked by common field stones something
confirmed by Mormon letters and photos taken over the
past century but it may
surprise many to learn that at the time Parley Pratt was
buried there were only two cemeteries or family burying
grounds as they were often called, in that area and they
were the Winn Family burying grounds and the other is about four
miles north on today's modern AR Hwy 282 and is the Stewards' burying grounds, it had three graves with
early stone markers and it should be noted that the
coffin that it is said Parley Parker Pratt was buried
originated from the Steward sawmill and workshop that
set next to the Steward's cemetery an interesting detail
of importance in any investigation to locate the remains
of Parley Parker Pratt today but why so few cemeteries
in 1857? Apparently at that time
people were not in the habit of burying their dead in a
common place and under a carved marker so at the time
Parley Pratt was buried it was reported there were few
graves at the Winn burying grounds and none were marked with carved stones.
Today the
Mormons have the lawns mowed and everything is in good
repair but I have doubts that
Parley Parker Pratt body was in the coffin that was buried
at the Winn cemetery, I have a theory that
Parley Parker Pratt may be buried in an unmarked grave in the
Steward Cemetery probably among the unnamed
graves of the slaves reported to have been buried there. I doubt
my theory could ever be
proven but I base my theory mostly on my experience
investigating the things people do. One of my
early assignments as a Washington Co Deputy Sheriff was
in the summer of 1977 I set in a darken Sunday School room
of a Fayetteville Church armed with my .357 revolver in
my shoulder holster under my dress coat as I held my shotgun
in my hands
and I set with the door cracked just enough that I could see
the funeral proceedings and when it was over, still so
armed I rode in the hurst with the body 30 miles to the
cemetery where other Deputies were waiting and we stood
watch as the graveside service was conducted and the
casket was lowered in the ground and covered over and this was
all done at the request of the family and the blessings
of the minister to prevent the man's sons by another
woman from taking the body at gun point.
They were in a dispute over where the body of their
father would
be buried so I know that sometimes lawmen do things to
try to make a bad situation come out right and such may have been in motion for Parley Parker Pratt
body because of his dying request that his body be
returned to Utah.
Consider William Steward made the coffin that Parley
Parker Pratt was said to be placed in and the pine box
that the coffin was to be lowered into so William
Steward was already willingly involved in an unpopular
burial and
the Steward cemetery was his family's burial grounds so what better place to hide
a body that some believed might be dug up by locals and
mutilated. The best place to keep the body safe
until it could be returned to Utah would be to hide it in a
grave among the graves of slaves in another cemetery
and this could be the reason Steward may have worked all night and into the
next day on the coffin and pine box. He may have had an
order to make two coffins, one for a decoy to be buried
in the Winn Cemetery and the other for a temporary
burial of Parley Parker Pratt's body to be concealed in the Steward cemetery. William Steward sent his son with an ox
and a cart to deliver the coffin and his son was allowed to
stay for the funeral and then return, who is to say that
William's father Harvey didn't go with his grandson to
make delivery or that Harvey didn't just show up at the
funeral to see
if the decoy burial of a coffin likely filled with some
bags of dirty was successful. After the
placing of the coffin at the graveside Harvey Steward could have
allowed his grandson to remain to see the funeral while
Harvey
moved the cart "out of sight" by returning to
the black smith shop where he and another trusted person loaded
Parley in the cart and hid his body, likely under
some hay or a tarp and after the service the cart with
the concealed body was returned to William Steward where
he placed Parley in the second coffin and awaited George
Higginson who buried Pratt among the slaves buried in
Steward cemetery late at night as Higginson claimed in a
letter written about the event. The grandson who was interviewed
by the Mormons decades later may have not known any of this, Harvey and
William, his grandfather and father had no reason to include him, they would have
wanted to keep the number of people who knew to a very
limited and trusted number because if the knowledge
became public it could have deadly results for the
Stewards. The night burial
that George Higginson wrote about could have occurred
and he may have written the
story leaving out the key detail about the burial at
Steward's cemetery so if the
journal fell into the wrong hands the true place of
burial would not be discovered and he may have left that
detail out
because Judge Ogden knew of the location of the real
burial.
Judge Ogden would have had experiences in these matters,
he would have known that burying the body in the woods
was too risky, getting the body into the woods
without discovery would be difficult then one runs the risk that a hunter
might find the burial. It has been my experience
when a grave in the woods was discovered we would open the
grave to see what it concealed something that was likely
true then as well but no one would question
a fresh grave in the slave area of the Steward Cemetery,
such a grave would go unnoticed.
If the mob did return to the dig up the decoy at the
Winn cemetery, everyone would think the Mormons
just beat them to it and Parley's body was on the way
back to Utah and that would likely have been the end of
it. The conspirators
surely planned that later when things cool down Parley
could be dug up from his secret grave at Stewards and
transported back to Utah and no one would be the wiser
and certainly everyone involved would likely be well
rewarded for their efforts by the Mormons.
So why would William Steward do this? I think for
the same reason he made the box and the coffin but why
would the
Judge John B Ogden ask William Steward or his father to do it?
Harvey Steward's gravestone bears a
Masonic symbol
and
Henry Steward
who died Oct 8 1855 was buried in Steward's and his stone
also bears a
Masonic symbol. The judge was reported to have
been a Mason, he,
Harvey Steward, as well as
Henry Steward could have been of the same lodge, the
judge could have attended
Henry Steward's burial just two years before and
knew of the slave graves in the Steward family cemetery
and masons are good at keeping their lodge secrets as
they are in taking care of one of their mason brothers so
Judge John B Ogden and
Harvey Steward had a reason to do
it for their
mason brother
Parley Parker Pratt
as his dying request was for his
body to be taken back to Utah and before assigning
blame, ask, "who would it hurt to give a dying man his
final wish"? So if what I suggest did occur, I am
certain it was done for the right reasons, I know if I
had been asked to do it, I would have so I believe it is
very possible that was the plan and they were just
waiting for some time to pass, may have been waiting for
George Higginson to return to Arkansas,
but during the cooling off period September 11 1857 occurred at
Mountain
Meadows in Utah and I suspect
Judge John B Ogden and
Harvey Steward may have decided it would be too great of
a risk to themselves and their families as feelings in
Arkansas were
high and one might find themselves swinging from a mobs
rope if such a plot to smuggle Pratt back to Utah was discovered. If Parley was wearing a
breast plate or his coffin did have a brass marker, you
can bet none of the slaves had such so it might not be
too much of a chore to know but I would not recommend
anyone go digging into any grave, slave or otherwise
without proper legal authority. It is a shame the
identity of the slaves buried in the Steward Cemetery can't be known, it
is likely they have descendants wanting to know where
they are and I think they are owed that kindness.
If it hasn't been done those managing the Cemetery
should at least go the few hundred bucks it would costs
to put up a brass marker acknowledging their burial.
I also have a theory about where Parley was attacked and
murdered. The roads were much
different in 1850s than they are today and I think
because it was claimed that Parley was killed a few
miles north of Alma most believed that he took the
modern US 64 Hwy route to Alma then turned north on the
modern US 71 route but this 1855 map to the right
clearly
shows that the main road from Van Buren to Fayetteville
via Fine's Springs or Tarrytown as it was known in that
time
bypassed Alma and went directly to Belmont, the seat of
Lafayette Township. It is doubtful that in that
time there was another way to get from Van Buren to Alma
because of the sizeable creek crossing that modern US 64
spans today. Maybe a ferry was available but maybe
not and a man fleeing on a fast horse would not want to
be held up at a ferry crossing. It is for certain that the
road from Van Buren to Belmont did not go in a straight line, it would have twist
and turned sometimes following the path of some of our
modern roads and sometimes not. It may have
just followed the modern 282 highway through Rudy but if
it did the maker of the 1855 map was not very good at his
craft. If Parley Pratt was found dying a few miles north of Alma it makes sense that
he was found murdered along this Van Buren to Belmont
road and if he was murdered near a fork in that road
where Zealie Winn may have had his blacksmith shop there
were likely two
prime locations along the Van Buren to Belmont Road
for such a shop and they would be where that road joined with the Rudy Road or with the
road that went to Alma. James Newberry is given
credit for the donation of the land for the church and
cemetery at Newberry Chapel and I am certain neither existed at that time
because James Newberry would have been only 21 years
old, the oldest marked grave in Newberry is Robert
Newberry who died Oct 29 1860 but using that cemetery as
reference I suspect the Alma road was on the east side
of Newberry Chapel as it is today and the Rudy road was
on the west of Newberry Chapel but the roads could also
have been rerouted and the modern roads are no where
near those intersection but I feel certain if one were
going setup a blacksmith's shop in the middle of no
where you would want it on the corner where two high
traffic roads joined and I suspect that is what Zealie
did but it is also just as possible that Zealie's shop
was that Arkansas Hwy 282 where the 282 Link turns off
going north as this would put the tree that Pratt was
found next to about 100 yards from the spring. It might not be difficult to locate those forks as
an infrared image taken from a Satellite would likely show
all the ancient road beds and a metal detector might
find evidence of an old blacksmith shop.
I have placed a red X in the approximate location that
Fine Springs will be on this map, it set at the right
foot of the T in Belmont but Belmont and Fine Springs is
actually a bit further east than this map indicates. It
seems likely the 282 Link road that goes past the modern cemetery and the section of US 71 that continues on at
the bottom end of the 282 Link Road were part of the the original Van Buren to Belmont road
but I suspect that road ran on the east side of the
Lodge Hall and not the west as it is currently located
and I think that because that would have been the
boundaries between the sections and that appears to be
supported by some of the early statements given to the
Mormons investigating the burial site, that he was
buried 50 yards west of the Fayetteville road. The black line
on this map is the Wire Road which was how the telegraph
connected Fayetteville to Van Buren and in 1858 the
Butterfield stage was side to have followed that route from Fayetteville
to Van Buren but I have growing doubts that was true.
I now believe that the reason that Jonathan and Rachael
Fine moved their family Crawford County and purchased
the the place surrounding the springs was to establish a
stage stop which included night lodging for the short
lived Butterfield Stage line and after the line was
discontinued after only a few
 years operations, that
other stage lines came into being and they used the path
that ran out of Fayetteville and traveled southeast
towards Van Buren bypassing the ordinal route of the
Butterfield Stage. Many of the early sources give
the rugged Boston Mountain route that runs south out of
Winslow as the way the stage traveled. There is
claimed to be a desk still in existence that Peter Fine
used when he worked for the Overland Mail Stage Company
and I believe that it is likely the entire Fine family
worked to provide this Stage Station for John
Butterfield.
There is an
1889 map that shows the rail service and Tarrytown
which was by that time actually knows as "Fine Springs".
Who owned Fine's Springs before the Fines moved to
Crawford County?
In many of the early written accounts, the springs are
given as "Fine's Springs" and I believe that name is
more correct than the shortened and more modern "Fine
Springs".
It is unclear if the Winns may had owned or had possession of the Springs at
the time of the 1840 US Census, or if it was the
Freemans or the family of Romulus James or Robert as he
appears in most Genealogy pedigrees who was the husband of
Elizabeth Freeman and
a brother to John M James. Ethel Plum gives his
name as "Rome" and since his first born son was named
Romulus and his second born William the name of his
father, it seems certain that his name must have been
Romulus and not Robert however the James do not appear
in the 1840 census but do appear in the 1850 census and
the below newspaper account give them arriving in 1842.
It seems certain
Romulus didn't sell the springs to Jonathan Fine as
Romulus is said to have died in 1853 returning from the
gold fields in California so it may be Elizabeth Freeman
the widow of Romulus sold the property to Hugh
Frazier and Jonathan Fine purchased it from Hugh Frazier
but if Jonathan Fine purchased it
when he came from Washington Co about 1857 to 1859 how
and why did the
springs end up in William James name making it possible
for him and his wife Millie Fine to sell it to Walter
Fine in the spring of 1875? Maybe Romulus did own it
and when he disappeared returning from California the springs
were to pass to his older son Romulus C when he came of
age but Romulus C died in the Civil War only his younger
brother William to inherit the Springs when he came of age.
It is said Millie Fine was to have married Romulus C but
when he died she married William and the 1870 US Census
seems to place them living at or very near the
Springs so this could be one explanation as to how
William James came to own the springs and was able to
sell them to Millie's older brother Walter April 8 1875 or six months before the
death of Millie's father, Jonathan. While it is well accepted
that Jonathan and Rachael owned Fine Springs I am
not as certain they owned the actually springs. From
the legal descriptions in the Deed
that Jonathan and Rachael passed to their children
August 16 1869 of 260 acres that spread over both
Section 18 and section 19 of township 10 and range 30
they did not pass ownership in that document but it does
prove that Jonathan and Rachael owned property on both
the north and the south of modern day Arkansas Hwy 282
which borders the actually springs. A greater
study of the many land transactions may provide the
answer but
there are
some who maded the claim in a 1999 post on Rootsweb
that
William James and Thomas Jefferson Fine were cousins.
This was before any marriage occurred between the James
family and the Fines so how could such a connection
occur? That answer could come from the claim by
some that before Jonathan Alfred Fine married Rachael Mankins that he was married to an Elisabeth Freeman who
died and her death made it possible for Jonathan to marry again but this time to
Rachael Mankins. I can find nothing to support
that Jonathan ever had a wife other than Rachael but if this claim is true then Jonathan
Fine could be related by marriage to William James
making all of Jonathan's children cousins to the James
family. It may also be possible that if the springs
were in the ownership of the Freeman's that he may have
inherited them via his marriage to his deceased wife.
If this were true, it may be difficult to prove because
a great many records were destroyed in the Crawford Co
Courthouse fire in the 1870s but there is claimed that a
1934 newspaper article was written in 1934 Press Argus
that claims John and Robert (Romulus) James were the
original owners and that they sold the springs to Hugh
Frazier and Hugh sold them to Jonathan and that could
certainly be the truth and those records were destroyed
in the Courthouse fire. If there was a log home
large enough for two families no evidence exists today,
only the small log home survives.
Copied from The Press-Argus
Diamond Jubilee Edition
Friday, July 6, 1934
FINE SPRINGS SETTLED
FIRST by JAMES IN 1845
Fine Springs was first settled in 1845 by John
and Robert James, who came
from middle Tennessee by steamboat to Van Buren
in 1842. Their grandfather
had come from England in 1627 with Lord
Baltimore.
These two brothers built the first gin to be
erected in western Arkansas,
on what is now the Tobe Steward place in Alma.
In 1845 they moved four miles
north of Alma and staked their claim, on which
was a very large spring. Here
they built a gin for themselves and this one and
the one at Alma were run by
using oxen on a tread mill. Close by the spring
they built a large log house
in which both families lived, the dwelling now
still standing and being used
as a barn by the present owner, Calvin Little.
The James brothers sold their claim to Hugh
Frazier from Mississippi
and the Bob James family then established a home
on the Shull Place between
Fine Springs and Dean Springs.
In 1949 both men went to California, Lured by
the gold rush. John James
found much gold and sent for his family in 1851.
Bob James wrote his family
he was leaving for home by boat and he was seen
by friends entering the ship
with his bags of gold, but nothing was ever
heard of his again and the
supposition is that he was killed. His wife, who
was Elizabeth Freeman,
lived a widow seven years then married Moses
Ford, father of Uncle Joe Ford
of Alma.
Frazier prepared to leave for Texas so he sold
the spring to Jonathan
Fine, who had moved from Washington County,
Arkansas in 1857 and it was from
this Jonathan Fine that the spring received the
name it holds today.
Source:
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/FINE/2003-02/1046055006
|
I have 30 years experience giving interviews to
newspapers and TV and I caution descendents about
accepting something as fact solely because it appeared
in the press. The press is a for profit business and my
experience is they tend to tell people what they want to
hear so they will make more profit. In 1999 as a
personal computer expert I was asked to give my opinion
about Y2K and I told the truth, I said 99% of Americans
who didn't buy new computers or new software would
experience no difficulties when they woke up on Jan 1
2000 and that is exactly how it occurred around the
world but that isn't what the TV reporter wanted to hear
so they cut and spliced my interview making it appear
that I was agreeing with a University Professor who gave
a gloom and doom prediction about how banks, power
companies and others would have problems. People spent
a great deal of money trying to needlessly avoid Y2K but
the rest of the world didn't and they had no real
problems reported anywhere in the world so just because
this story ran in the paper in 1934 that isn't proof
that it happened that way one needs to find real
documents of land transactions to prove such a story.
If you need more proof, ask
Virginia if there is a Santa Claus, that story also ran
in a newspaper.
The large log house is said to have existed on the south
side of Hwy 282 where it intersects with the Hwy 282
Link Road. In modern times it was covered with
siding but it is likely this was the home that Jonathan
and Rachael occupied when the moved to Fine's Springs in
the late 1850s. None of these old log houses
exists anymore and I don't recall this house standing in
the 50's during my youth.
Fine's Springs during our Civil War
The springs would not have been a place one would desire
to remain as it became a favorite stopping place for
both side during the Civil War. Both Armies burned the
split rail fences for fuel, raided the near by farms for
food and livestock and took any male that was of age to
fight so it isn't likely anyone would desire to live
near such unlawfulness. With the ending of the Civil
War came the marriage of Millie Fine the daughter of
Johnathan and Rachael Fine to William James one of the
sons of Romulus James and I suspect he was the man who
in or about 1844 built the next to the springs the small
log house that appears in my photography.
In the time the Fines lived at the springs it was know
as "Fine's Springs" and it was such a center of activity
in Crawford County that when the Crawford County
Courthouse in Van Buren burned March 23 1877 in what was
believed to have been a fire that was purposely set the
citizens pondered about restoring the courthouse but
rebuilding it in Van Buren was only one option that was
considered as the following appears in the newspaper:
| May 16 1877 |
We learn an effort is being made to get a
petition to the country court calling an
election to change the country seat to Fine's
Springs, Lafayette Township. Let us first
decide whether it should be changed to Alma.
If not, then give our Lafayette friends a
chance. |
The coming of the Plums to Fine's Springs
James A and Susan Plum my wife's great, great
grandparents moved from Iowa to Crawford Co and
they are recorded in the 1900 and 1910 Rudy township
census living between Fine Springs and the Stanfields
and the Moons so if the Stanfields were living then
where they were when I was a child it seems the Plums
likely were living along modern day Ar 282 Hwy very near
my childhood home and the place where I first met their
great great granddaughter who was to become my wife and
the mother of my two sons.
Walter Fine died in 1902 and his wife died in 1903 it
isn't clear who became the owners of the springs at that
time but it would seem John and Mary Fine had legal ownership as
in 1912 they signed a deed to James and Susan Plum and
they became the legal owners of Fine Springs and while
their heirs no longer owned the springs, they do
continued to live on a smaller portion of the property
that the Fines sold to James and Susan Plum more than
100 years ago.
Between 1912 and 1920 James and Susan Plum divided up
the property and sold some of it off so in later years
the springs portion of the original property came into
the possession of a family named Underwood. The
Underwoods improved the property, put in a place to
dance and dine and began to advertise it as the Fine
Springs Park in the late 1920s and early 1930s to
encourage the well to do to travel from Van Buren, Ft
Smith, and Fayetteville to swim, dance, and eat.
Eventually the park closed people died off and the
property came into the possession of C C Davis and over
the years most of the buildings that were once part of
the park fell into decay and were torn down. The
original log house still survive but only because it was
protected by the home that had been built around it.
If built in 1844 as some think that building would be
169 years old in 2013. The log house is behind a tall
fence and a locked gate and public tours are not
permitted and those caught inside that fence will be
prosecuted so be warned but I was allowed the privilege
to photograph the cabin as to preserve it's image for
history as time and the elements will eventually take it
away as it does for all things. I share my photos
with all the descendants of Jonathan and Rachael Fine
and of James and Susan Plum.
Fine Springs was a thriving community as in the book "History of Crawford County" I have found many
examples of two story buildings built in towns and
communities and they housed a Masonic Lodge on the top
floor and a school that sometimes doubled as a church on
the lower floor and Fine Springs had just such a
building in operation. I have not been able to
determine when it was build but it was in operation in
1930. It was near that time when the Fine Springs
Public School consolidated with Alma so I suspect the
lower floor may have set vacant but not for long as the
Fine Springs Baptist Church burned so they moved into
the lower floor where the school once operated.
Ethel Plum taught Sunday School in that building and her
family attended church there until about 1938 when that
building was destroyed by fire. The Masons I
suppose were determined because they build a single
story building back but this time out of masonry blocks.
In 1961 they expanded it doubling the size of the
building and it is still in operation today.
Jonathan and Rachael Fine and Walter and Nancy Fine
were my great, great, great and great, great
grandparents. My wife is the great great
granddaughter of James and Susan Plum, she and her
father and her little dog, Annie, can be seen in the
above photograph so our two sons had three and maybe
four sets of grandparents, two on each side who occupied
that log home but our sons have yet another tie to the
area as in 1870
James Stamps O'Kelley, my great, great grandfather
bought his family from Gordon Georgia by wagon arriving
February 3, 1871 and he must have settled in Fine
Springs as my grandmother is buried in the near by
Love Cemetery and the 1880 US Census places him on
the next line below my grandfather Walter Fine.
Fine Springs had a public school and a church and
Charles William O'Kelley the son of
James Stamps O'Kelley was the pastor a number of
years and my childhood home is but a mile or a bit more
down the road from this area. The
church never returned to that area, the Fine Springs
Park is just a memory and all the old timers who knew
the true history of this place have all past on.
Ethel Plum a granddaughter-in-law of James and Susan
Plum and a celebrated writer for the Press Argus
Newspaper wrote a
history about Fine Springs that was published about
1960. She didn't have access to all the modern
search tools that are available to me but her history is
pretty accurate after all she was reporting on what she
was told about the family of her husband so one can
expect it not to be perfect. The photo is of Roy
Plum "Jr" and his daughter Renee', and in the background is the old home
of Roy and Ethel Plum. For decades she wrote about
others and what she wrote appeared in the Press Argus, I
think it is fitting that someone writes about her.
Fine's Springs Primitive Baptist Church
It seems well accepted that this church existed but I
have found no documents or source as to who established
this church or when it was established. The log
church house is mentioned in the Mormon documents
relating to the funeral of
Parley Parker Pratt so that indicates that it
was in operation before 1857 which was the year Pratt
was murdered and the Primitive Baptist predates most all
other Baptist. Some claim that
James Stamps O'Kelley, the father of Rev
Charles William O'Kelley was a
Primitive Baptist Minister and that was his reason
for moving from Georgia to Fine's Springs, he became the
pastor of the church and that may be true but I have
found nothing to prove it. If one looks at the
photo of James Stamps O'Kelley they will find his
manner of dress is that of a minister and not as a
farmer as many of the Primitive
Baptist beliefs are still represented in my family today
even though my family thinks of themselves as "Freewill"
Baptist.
Primitive Baptist Ministers are "called" to preach
and didn't seek out formal education which is how the
ministers of my childhood came to preach, their training
came from observing other ministers. The founding
of the Fine Springs Missionary Baptist Church was July
14, 1883 and it's first minister Rev John O Love is
described on page 595 in the "History
of Benton, Washington, Carroll, Madison, Crawford, Franklin, and
Sebastian Counties, Arkansas" and
James Stamps O'Kelley daughter Mary is recorded as
one of the founding members so it seems likely that the
Fine's Springs Primitive Baptist Church transformed into
the Fine Springs Missionary Baptist Church. From the
memory of those living in the early part of the 1900s,
it seems agreed that before the Fine Springs Missionary Baptist
Church moved into the lower floor of the two story Mason
Building on the east side of Arkansas Hwy 282 Link Road, that the log church
that burned was located on the west
side of the Arkansas Hwy 282 Link Road and a bit further
south than where the current lodge hall is now located.
Since the Wynn Burying Ground as they were called in
those days is located very near to where the log church
would have stood, I suspect that the Wynn's may have
established and may have built the original log church.
Ethel Mae Philbrick Plum
Ethel appears in the photo with her three sisters.
From left to right they are
Theda, Loretta, Ethel, and Opal. I don't
think any real discussion of Fine Springs can begin
without the mention of it's longest resident, for
75 years each time Ethel walked out her back door to get
her mail the Vista of Fine Springs laid before her.
She lived at Fine's Spring almost twice as long as any
Fine.
She was born
in 1907 in Coffeeville Kansas as Ethel Mae Philbrick to
Richard Allen Philbrick and Estella May Andrews.
Her father was a skilled glass blower and Ethel use to
tell her grandchildren that as a child she never wanted
anything, her father made a great deal of money and
showered his family with all he could give them but that
ended when hand glass blowers were put out of
their jobs by automation. Richard had an
opportunity to retrain and work with the machinery that
replaced him but he was too stubborn, he believed that
people would reject the cheaply made glass and his job
would be restored, of course that never happened so her
family pretty much fell into poverty. Sometime
between 1920 and 1924 her family moved to Crawford
County. She loved school but to her great
disappointment she wasn't allowed to finish high school,
her parents could not afford to pay for her 12th year.
She married Roy Plum the son of Ulysses Grant Plum when
she was but 16 days past her 17th birthday. I
never heard her say if she married because of love or
duty and I doubt she would have ever said if anyone had
asked her but she didn't allow her marriage or her
disappointment about not being allowed to finish school
to hold her back. She educated herself as she took
pen in hand and wrote countless pages about life in
general. She was also a published Poet that won her
awards.
It was Ethel's misfortune to have been born into a man's
world, she did like most of her generation was expected,
she married, bore a daughter and a son, maintain her
home and in later years to help her family get by she
worked at the Alma Cannery while continuing her other
duties. I am not sure she every learned to drive,
that just wasn't something women of her generation were
allowed to do. She was a kind hearted woman, made
some of the best home made bread and fried chicken, she
made her own yeast and raised, killed and cleaned her
own chickens. I looked forward to her Sunday
dinners, she would sometimes stayed home while the rest of her family
went to church so when they returned they would have one
of her meals ready to set on the table. Looking back on
it, she didn't need to go to church, she lived her
faith, she was a humble person giving her all for
others, a rare quality even today.
I never heard her complain, she always seemed happy and
with a smile on her face and she always seemed to look
for the good in people, even when they were not good to
her yet I never heard a word come from her that was
negative about anyone. To her son and daughter she
was "mother" to my wife she was "grandma" and to our
sons she was their "grandma Ethel". I suppose that
from the time she had just turned 17 until the year that
she died Ethel never lived very many days without looking out her back door at the Springs of
Fine Springs. She lived there longer than Zealie
Wynn, James Ormes, any of the Fines, longer than any of
the James family who appear to have first owned it,
longer than anyone else that I have discovered.
She must have seen a great deal as she lived when the
church was there, she lived when the school set below
the lodge hall and she lived when the Springs was a
park. She was one year old when Henry Ford rolled
out his first model A and five when the Titanic sank,
seven when WWI broke out, she was eleven when it ended,
and twelve when her mother was finally given the right
to vote. She lived during the boom time of the
roaring Twenties and through its following depression
and she was thirty four when the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor she was thirty eight when WWII ended. She
saw Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and countless other
wars. She was 62 when Neil Armstrong stepped upon the
moon. Theodore Roosevelt was our 26th President when she
was born and William Jefferson Clinton was our 42nd
President when she died and there were fifteen other
Presidents during her lifetime. Ethel was an eye
witness to history but her greatest interest was our
American Civil War. She lived to see the invention of
movies, Radio, TV, computers, and the Internet. 99.9% of
all of man's knowledge and inventions happened in her
lifetime, she really did see it all. She was
probably born at home in her mother's bed without the
aid of a physician, she died in a fully modern hospital
and in the attendance of well educated and trailed
doctors and nurses.
Ethel Mae Philbrick Plum died March 10 1999 at the age of
92 and the day she was buried I remember well. It was a dreary and
dismal day, just the kind of day for a funeral with huge downpours of rain almost as if
nature was mourning her loss. The next day the sky
filled with large wet heavy snow flakes and it didn't stop
until at least eight inches had fallen and many trees
had broken under its weight.
The old house still stands mostly silent and empty,
there are none of the mouth watering smells of her fresh
baked bread and fried chicken but several times each
week her son and his old buddies will gather in the
backyard or on her old back porch, drink their coffee
while swapping stories as old men do about the glory
days when they were young, strong, and handsome and their women
were pretty as they look out at Fine Springs.
Related things that might be of Interest
I have been informed his elders that Newberry Chapel
was the 22 school and I have been
provided by Glenn Fine a descendant of Peter Fine
something written by his aunt
Mabel Fine Anderson about her school days when she
attended 22 school and when it was closed the kids had
to walk to Rudy which was some distance away from
Newberry Chapel community.
You can see more photos of the log home
here and see some poor copies of the
Underwoods Fine Springs Park advertisements that
were distributed.
So what do I call this a log house and not a log cabin?
Cabins were built in haste, the logs were not finished
out, they were left round but log houses had the corners
well fitted to be tight, the logs were hewed to make
them square and windows were added. The Albert
Pike School on the Crawford Co Court House lawn and the
log buildings located at the Prairie Grove Battle Field
State Park are all examples of how log buildings
appeared. Many log homes till stand today but they
don't look like log homes because the logs have been
covered over by siding or brink and the insides
remodeled to look like a modern home.
A special thanks goes to Glenn Fine for sharing a great
many documents and Fine family history. I hope to
translate all these handwritten documents into type to
make them easier to read and understand and I hope to
provide maps showing the places indicated by each deed.
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