Contents Life in Arkansas Stumped   Children's Stories 



Elsie's family lived in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1903 and 1904. Her sister Frances was born there.

Elsie finds a fossil in a limestone quarry, and there is an explosion.

Bentonville

When I was a little girl, I lived, for a time, in Bentonville, Arkansas, the county seat of Benton Co., which occupies the very northwest corner of the state. Like many other small towns, this village was built about a square which was covered with green grass and oak trees and surrounded by hitching posts. In the center of the square stood a band stand, and across the street, on all four sides, were the stores.

A street which started from one corner of the square ran past the court house, the hotel, dozens of houses and a few vacant lots down through a ravine, then on beyond more houses and vacant lots. Finally it came to our neighborhood. On the first corner stood a large white house where one of the boys of the gang, Willie Hall, lived. Half a block farther and on the same side of the street, lived Armstrongs, who had two girls Claudie and Eula, and one boy, Kelly, within our age limit; though the older girl, Eula, sometimes considered herself too dignified to take part in our escapades.

The brother is Bowman, and the baby sister is Frances.

When Elsie was 9 1/2, it was the Spring of 1904.

Next door was my home which I shared with my father, mother, brother and baby sister. I was nine and a half and thought I was as big as any of the others who were mostly ten and twelve. My brother, also was only eight, would not have been included in many of our games were it not for the fact that he owned a pony which the others liked to ride now and then.

Mary Morgan is mentioned in Elsie's Itinerary as her childhood pal in Bentonville.

About a block farther, and the last house on that side of the street, was the home of Mary Morgan. She had no brothers or sisters, but had a large yard in which to play, and was as full of ingenuity in thinking up new games as a spice cake is full of raisins. Mary was my chum and chief comrade the year round in school as well as during vacation.

Soon after it passed Mary’s house our street became a road. Then it wound its way through a long ravine which followed the side of a sloping hill until, at the foot of this hill, it crossed the valley on the other side. Beyond the narrow wagon bridge which spanned the creek here, stood the slaughter house, in front of which grew an oak tree from whose branches hundreds of pigs’ tails fluttered in the breeze. A little farther on was the lime kiln, built beside a bluff from which the stone was quarried. A large spreading tree grew just far enough away from the edge of the loading platform for a team and wagon to pass between. At this lime kiln, my daddy was boss over a number of men, some of them white and some of them black. I often went down there with him at night to watch the white-hot lime drawn from the mouth of the kiln. Against the darkness it glowed like a huge heap of phosphorus. Sometimes, during the day, I wandered about the quarries looking for peculiar pieces of rock.

One day I espied a bit of stone with the print of fern upon it. I was working away so industriously, trying to pull it out from under a heavy rock, that I had not noticed what was taking place. I did not hear the warning whistle or see the men hustling to places of safety. As one of them, a rather old man with grayish white hair and whiskers which matched his surroundings, brushed passed me, he exclaimed: “Why, Elsie, what are you all a-doin’ here? Come out the way. We just set a stick.” I jumped to my feet and was jerked, along with him, behind a jutting corner of the quarry, just as a loud report rent the air. Then scraps of stone fell in a regular shower. As soon as this had settled enough so it would not strike my head, I ran out to look for my fossil. The blast had made great cracks in the wall of rock so the men could easily take it out with their picks. The large piece of rock was moved enough so my fossil was free, and there lay another beside it. Eagerly snatching them up, I cautiously made my way down to the road, then walked along as quickly as possible to Mary’s house to show her my treasures.

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