This week in Arkansas History
August 11-17, 2025
1786 The legendary frontiersman and congressman Davy Crockett was born in Greene County, Tennessee. He reportedly stated during a visit in Arkansas, “If I could rest anywhere it would be in Arkansas, where the men are of the real half-horse, half-alligator breed such as grow nowhere else on the face of the universal earth but just around the backbone of North America.”
1870 Pompey Factor, the Arkansan son of a black Seminole chief, enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the midst of the Red River War (1874–1875) between the United States and the Comanche and Kiowa, Factor was involved in a skirmish on April 25, 1875. Indian scouts Factor, Sergeant John Ward, and Trumpeter Isaac Payne, along with their commander, Lieutenant John L. Bullis, came upon the trail of a herd of seventy-five horses they suspected had been taken from white settlers. They followed the tracks to the Eagle’s Nest Crossing, just east of present-day Langtry, Texas, where they spotted the horses and twenty-five to thirty Comanche. Factor and his companions took cover within seventy-five yards of the Comanche and opened fire. They killed three warriors and wounded another. Twice they took the horse herd but both times had to retreat and take cover. The scouts then realized they were about to be encircled by the Comanche, which would make them unable to get to their own horses. They retreated to their horses and started to ride away. Sergeant Ward then noticed that Lieutenant Bullis was not able to mount his frightened horse and was nearly surrounded by the Comanche. He alerted Factor and Payne, and they turned around to rescue their commander. Under heavy fire, Ward pulled Bullis onto his horse while Factor and Payne provided cover. The scouts then rode to safety. Factor and his fellow scouts were awarded the Medal of Honor on May 28, 1875, for the bravery they exhibited at Eagle’s Nest Crossing. They were three of only eighteen black soldiers during the Indian Wars who received such an honor.
1898 Stone carver Nick Miller took his own life in Berryville (Carroll County). Born in Germany around 1846, Miller moved often after immigrating to the United States, as many stone carvers did. His artistry is found in cemeteries throughout northwest Arkansas. The tombstones he made—crisply legible well over a century later—employ typical mourning symbols of his time, yet Miller’s bas-relief motifs and deeply incised lettering exhibit an uncommon level of skill. On the day of his suicide, he sent for friends (only one man showed up) and swallowed cyanide that he purchased six years earlier for this purpose. He was buried the same day in an unmarked grave in Berryville’s city cemetery, within sight of a dozen tombstones he had carved and signed. In his suicide note, he suggested selling his stone, tools, and photos to the Jones brothers to pay for his coffin. He also stated his reason for dying: “I have not outlived my friends,” he wrote, “but simply tired of making so many new starts in life.”
1919 Rex Humbard—a traveling evangelist who became a well-known gospel singer, pastor, and pioneer in Christian television—was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Young Humbard was inspired to become an evangelist after seeing a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus tent fill with crowds in Hot Springs (Garland County)—although he refused to attend such a “worldly” diversion himself. By the 1970s, a large network of between 1,500 to 1,600 stations worldwide in ninety-one languages carried his Sunday morning services. One of Humbard’s loyal viewers was Elvis Presley, who regularly watched “his preacher” each Sunday morning. Elvis Presley’s father, Vernon, asked Humbard to officiate at his son’s funeral in 1977.
1998 Mitchell Johnson pled guilty to all charges associated with the ambush-style school shooting at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro (Craighead County) that had taken place in March 1998. A trial against fellow shooter Andrew Golden was held the same day, and in just over three hours, he too was found guilty on all charges. The two students from Westside Middle School, located approximately two miles west of Jonesboro, had perpetrated an armed ambush on teachers and students, which resulted in five dead and ten injured.
Encyclopedia of Arkansas
Photo Credit:
A tombstone carved by Nick Miller, located at the Wesley Cemetery in Madison County.
