Spanish and French explorers established the first settlement on the east side of Black River where the river seems to outline a clover leaf. This odd geographical quirk gives the name Clover Bend to a community established at the same spot in the early 1800s by a Frenchman named Pierre Le Mieus. In the days before drainage ditches, the hillock upon which Clover Bend rested was virtually the only desirable place in the area for a settlement because much of the area was swamp land.
LeMew "as descendants of Lawrence County spell it" married a daughter of Anthony Janis, a Frenchman who made a claim in 1808 with Joseph Guignolet for tracts of land on Black River. In 1816 the grants were confirmed to John Baptiste Janis, the son of Anthony Janis who had died before the confirmation of the grants. In 1816 the land rights were sold to William Russess and a Charles Logan. All Frenchmen who had settled prior to the grants had sold by 1816 to LeMew. Other than records of grants and sales, little is known about LeMew except that he lived, raised a family, died and was buried in an unknown plot in the Old Clover Bend Cemetery.
Remote as the settlement was, it clung to existence, and in 1829 steamboats were finding thier way to its landing. The settlement was established as an important landing in river travel. Some years later the actual town was moved from the river to the present site about two miles east.
In 1840, Colonel Samuel Robinson, a colonel in the Confederate Army, bought from the United States Government the site of Clover Bend and thousands of acres in that part of the county. Col. Robinson, with the mighty power of a sizeable slave force, cleared and cultivated much of the land including vast swamp acreage, making it known as the Clover Bend Plantation. Col. Robinson was an active Whig and a very influential man in the political scene and served in the Arkansas Senate from 1846 to 1850 and also represented Lawrence County in the Secession Convention in 1861. It was through his powerful influence that the county seat was moved to Clover Bend from Smithville in 1868. The courthouse was situated there for one year until the Democrats gained control and moved it to Powhatan in 1869. Because there was a need, Col. Robinson and his slave force built a ferry for passage across Black River at Clover Bend and cut a road through the dense forest to Smithville. This connector of the eastern and western sections of the county was duly called Robinson Road. It fell into disuse after the county seat was moved to Powhatan. Today one of the better fishing bays is located in that vicinity and is known as Robinson Bay.
Col. Robinson, who died in 1870 was the father of two children, a son who preceded him in death and a daughter. The daughter, who inherited the estate and fortune, was married to a man by the name of Dowell. He employed Captain F. W. Tucker to oversee the estate. Captain Tucker, whose title was more or less a nickname since he was probably too young to have served in the Civil War, was a young New England Yankee coming to this area in 1877 from Massachusetts. Through the years, he accumulated some of the land by various means. Mr. Dowell became careless and, in a card game, he lost his wife's inheritance. A large portion of the Robinson estate fell into the ownership of an Allen family. This made Captain Tucker a shareholder with the Allen family.
In the autumn of 1883, Jane Allen Crawford (a widow), her mother and her brother, Ernest Allen, came to Northeast Arkansas to inspect their property. They brought with them Miss Alice French, a writer of fiction, who wrote under the pen name of Octave Thanet.
When the Allens, Mrs Crawford, and Miss French arrived at Minturn, Arkansas, on the Missouri Pacific Railroad line, six miles from Clover Bend, they were met by the other shardholder, Captain F. W. Tucker. The party and their luggage were loaded onto a buckboard drawn by a team of mules, and they set out on their journey through the cypress swamps to the plantation, over a floating corduroy road of logs laid side by side through the swamp mud, according to notes made by Alice French. The site was a vast change from their accustomed New England life.
After passing the first sign of civilization, "the plantation windmill", rising above the line of cypress and walnut trees that obscured the horizon, the group was astonished to find that Clover Bend was only a slightly more rustic version of the elegant plantation they had hoped to find. There were no Corinthian pillars and beautiful avenues, but instead set back from the willow-shaded river, was a large planter's house with piazzas enclosed by lattices covered by honeysuckle. And there were tenant cabins scattered in the middle distance, some white-washed, others painted variously blue, pink, or yellow, a variety that was the result of the fluctuating paint supply at the company store. Near the river stood the mill and a gin where the cotton was ginned and the corn ground, the plantation store, a smokehouse, barns and an ice house. Half a mile away was a schoolhouse, periodically empty when all the children were sent to the fields to "make a crop."
The Clover Bend Plantation was almost self-sufficient. It was eleven miles from the county seat across the river and six miles from the nearest railroad and directly accessible to steamboats coming up Black River. Other than the river, the only regular communication with the outside was either by the wagon drawn by six oxen which carried supplies including ice and fresh beef from Minturn, or a rider who brought the mail to the desk in the store that served as the post office.
Alice French wrote that Captain Tucker was a capable manager and performed various duties including lawyer, marriage counselor, judge, doctor, policeman and expert in all things except two, he declined to write love letters for plantation illiterates and he refused to pull teeth. Most of his duties were performed at the plantation store, the social center of the community, where plantations lounges gathered each day under the wide gambrel roof to discuss crops and beasts. The store was a grocery, millinery, pharmacy, hardware and farm implement store, gunsmith, meat market and jeweler's. And it was also the courthouse where plantation manager, as the justice, held court in an office separated from the rest of the store by a glass partition. When the court was in session, lounges gathered in the middle of the main room to watch law dispensed on the other side of the glass partition and to listen to the proceedings through iron grill set in the wall. Trials were short and unhampered by judicial formality, but punishment was mild and patterned on local customs.
It is simpler to mention here that Captain Tucker, in later years, acquired the Crawford-Allen share of the plantation and, in turn, sold it to the Slayden brothers. In 1937, that same land took on a new history when the Slaydens lost the land and it was purchased by the United States Government. Captain Tucker spent his last years in Little Rock.
It is only fair to include notations concerning the influence that Alice French had on Clover Bend, since so much of its colorful history is recorded in her writings. After the initial visit in 1883, Miss French spent her winters at Clover Bend foraging deep into the community life for stories and characters to fit into her romances.
Even up to the time of her death in 1934, at the age of 83, she retained an interest in Arkansas life. She lived in a cottage with Mrs. Jane Crawford. When they returned from Canada for an Arkansas winter in 1885, they found that their cottage had been painted red and moved away from the river and the danger of spring floods.
The following information was taken from "Journey to Obscurity", the life of Octave Thanet, by George McMichael. "In the red cottage Alice installed equipment for a carpentry shop, where she made shelves, picture frames, chairs, a chicken house and even fence gates......ten of them eventually placed around the area to direct the flow of animals and humans in an orderly New England fashion."
Miss Alice French wrote that one virtue of plantation life was that servants were plentiful, if not very reliable. The two women hired a Negro cook named Jinny and a "gnome-like darky" named Steve, who tended the fires in the house. Eventually, dependable servants were imported from the north, but the two women often had to fend for themselves, repairing their primitive drainage system, painting, hanging paper, once even building a chimmey out of old bricks, a mortar of sand and whitewash.
In 1895 fire destroyed the red cottage, and the following year Miss French and Mrs. Crawford bought a tract nearby and built a 15-room, three story house on the banks of Black River. It must have been a very grand sort of a house, especially for Clover Bend in the 1890s. It stood on a curve of the river, towering above clumps of cedar and oak that softened the conventionality of its architectural design and contrasted pleasantly with its white columns and walls. Shrubs imported from England went into the landscaping of the estate. Stables to the rear housed fine horses and an elegant carriage. Building materials came up the river by boat. The floors were brightly polished hardwood and Miss French made every stevedore remove his shoes before stepping into the house with a load of furniture.
Setting up a salon had its hazardous moments. The most nerve-wracking incident of moving day was when a team of mules failed to negotiate the steep bank leading up from the river and Miss French's massive grand piano slipped back on the boat from which it was being unloaded. Luckily, the ropes held fast. Otherwise, the Black River gar might have known strange new company. Not until two more mules were harnessed to the wagon was it possible to get the heavy piano up to the house.
Miss French chose the top floor for her study. From a window, she could follow the winding Black River as it flowed swiftly from the west, swept around the bend and turned westward again. She and Mrs. Crawford called the house "Thanford," a combination of Crawford and Miss French's pen name, Octave Thanet.
When the U.S. Government purchased the Clover Bend land, it began the task of rebuilding "Thanford," which, by 1937 had not only fallen into deterioration, but stood dangerously close to the encroaching Black River. The building was moved several hundred feet to a safer location, strengthened and thoroughly renovated. The structure was used as late as 1941 for a community recreation room. A framed photograph of Miss French hung above the fireplace. Many stories are told about the house and Miss French. Many of the stories include description of the beautiful gardens, French ladies sitting on the front porch, or the crystal doorknobs and how the house was moved back from the river by one man and one mule. Also, some of the famous people who visited the house in Miss French's day, one being Theodore Roosevelt.
During her many winters at Clover Bend, Alice French not only studied the people for her literary interests, but attempted and assisted in cultivating a more suitable and educated life. She organized and taught Sunday School Classes, at Christmas she entertained the area children with a gay party, climaxed with gifts of fruit, nuts and candy distributed from beneath a candle lit cedar tree. Seeing need for a school, Miss Alice French also organized and started a school, which was influenced by many New England standards, as a means to cultivate the varied classes of Clover Bend people. Once, she and a guest from Paris, France, visited schools in the neighborhood and gave dolls, made by Miss French herself, to the children. She also organized a community baseball team and outfitted it with uniforms.
Combining the local dialect with the Clover Bend locale and portraits of poor white sharecroppers, Alice French wrote her first Arkansas story, "Ma' Bowlin," in 1885. It presented two departures from conventional American fiction. It was set in the Arkansas back country and its heroine was a feebleminded child, Ma' Bowlin. The story was noteworthy in its description of the customs, speech and emotions of the tenant farmers, of their attitudes toward vengeance, death, God's punishment and His benevolence and in its intense descriptions of the swamps.
In 1886, the second local color story of Clover Bend was completed. "Whitsun Harp, Regulator" was developed from legends of Clover Bend and laden with Arkansas dialect. Critics labeled it weak with motivation and subtly remote, but accepted it when Alice French revised it somewhat. Because she was as realistic and understanding in her delineation of squatters, trappers, field laborers and Negroes as of the plantation aristocrats, her stories probably did seem outlandish to "Yankee" critics.
A study of rural Arkansas, "We All," is probably her best known work. "By Inheritance" concerns itself with the Negro problem and has been widely read. Other Arkansas books include: "Expiation", "Otto the Knight", "A Book of True Lovers" and "knitters in Sun", the latter being a story of a Ku Klux Klan-like group organized to put down lawlessness. Nearly all of these books were published between 1890 and 1910. From one-third to one-half of her literary production, Miss French estimated, originated in the quietly stimulating environment of her Clover Bend Home.
One literary critic in 1891 said of Alice French's works, "there is but one Arkansas and Octave Thanet is its prophet." One of her diversions at Thanford was printing the Clover Bend Poke Root, which by her own description was a collection of news and gossip, "published at the convenience of the Editor". The final issue of the humorous newsletter was published May 10, 1909, carrying a descriptive advertisement for the sale of Thanford.
During the plantation years, the Clover Bend area was populated with a variety of people other than aristocrats. George McMichael in the Alice French biography, "Journey to Obscurity", noted the following: "The many sharecroppers, black and white, operated under a system wherein plantation land was rented on shares returned to the owners by the tenants--one-fourth of a cotton crop, one-third of a corn crop. An additional one-sixth was charged for grinding corn in the mill. For such payments, the sharecropper received use of the land, a cabin and credit at the store for the potential value of the crop. It was a system full of abuses, but it had one overriding value: even the penniless could begin farming without money, equipment or land and they could make enough to survive, if eternally in debt."
In July 1891, Altlantic Monthly reported about Negroes and poor whites in "Plantation Life in Arkansas." Half the tenants on the Clover Bend Plantation were black. They were a completely submerged group, convivial, slow and warmly erotic. They lacked cardinal virtues, ran away from store debts and oppressive wives. They held a repulsive trail by relishing cruelty, which came from a torpid imagination to see inflicted animals, antics that delighted them. The plantation's poor whites were alike in lack of thrift and neatness. They burned fences for stove wood, let cows and pigs wander in their yards, and spit on the floors of their cabins. All seemed lazy, working only long enough to get money for immediate needs. Alice French wrote that the dialect of the Clover Bend people was borrowed from Tennessee, old survival of early French and Spanish and archaic English: boy dark (bois d'arc) for hedge; you was; I don't guess for I guess so; much for caress; can't make a riffle; lit a shuck.
A favorite pastime of the leisurable people was to retell the tales and legends that had grown from the Clover Bend Plantation clan. T hese numerous stories were recounted by loafers at the company store or when a few gathered seeking entertainment. One such tale concerned the plantation's own conjurer--a regular tenant who sold potions and charms (the skin of a rabbit's stomach relieved a teething baby when tied around the infant's neck). He claimed the power, when suitably inked or rewarded, to spread sickness and "blast crops,". The Negroes, who catered him most and suffered from his spells, could either pay him to pacify the spirits or take the strong remedy--Epsom Salts--offered free as a psychichnostrum.
From "Journey to Obscurity" comes the following: "There were stories of ghosts and 'ha'nts' enough to satisfy anyone . One ghost inhabited the loft of the plantation store. Another gibbered and shrieked and rolled in the mud before a cabin in which a tenant had died from a bite of a rabid dog. Another ghost, a murder victim, had haunted its murderer for years and repeatedly brushed a cold dead hand against his cheek until he killed himself.
Colonel Tucker told an eerie tale of a fanatic who had lived at Clover Bend and had appointed himself "regulator" of the people's morals, threatening some backsliders into righteousness, beating those who ignored the threats. One night when the "regulator" was walking through the garden of the Crawford-French home, "Thanford," he was shot from ambush and his body was carried into the dining room. In 1891, Alice French reported that on the rising of the night wind, ghosts bearing the "regulator's" body would come to the house, "their invisible fingers lift the latch; we see it rise; the door swings open; it swings back; they are in the room.
The most renowned ghost of all was the specter of the original owner of the plantation. During the Civil War, a cavalry force had been stationed in Arkansas, from which were sent raiding parties into Missouri. In 1864, with the end of the war less than a year away, the troops were withdrawn south, destroying everything left behind. The original planter, a "secessionist" but with "no mind to waste his cotton on a funeral pyre," had buried his silver, meat, salt, and even his cotton to hide them from the retreating Confederates and the approaching Union troops. Tradition held that his sudden death had prevented him from removing his hoard. It was well known that his ghost guarded the treasure. Renters often reported seeing a figure standing at the edge of a field, dressed like the old planter, with an immaculate white suit, a broad-brimmed white hat and carrying a riding whip in his hand. In spite of this fact (done mostly by moonlight) was an activity that revealed only pitted ground caused by the fortune hunters digging holes.
Factual stories were as frightening as the collected ghost stories. Colonel Tucker told of marauding groups of guerrillas, "graybacks" belonging to neither side, who had pillaged the countryside during the Civil War. Clover Bend was surrounded by places where men had been killed by this group. On the west bank of Black River, they murdered a family and burned the house over their bodies. They employed various means of torture, such as hot coals on a victims back, fingernails ripped off and men and women flogged to death. Many of these attacks occurred at various points between Clover Bend and Portia.
Social minded Alice French, whose popular stories caught the mystery and color of Arkansas canebrakes, would heartily approve the use of her beloved Lawrence county plantation if she could have seen it in the early 1940's. Should she have driven her carriage along the roads and lanes that once were so familiar to her, she would find neat farm homes instead of huts, clean fields and strong fences where once there stood swamp water and thickets. She would see the striking results of planning and hard work on the part of farm families co-operating with the Farm Security Admimistration.
Suffering with the rest of the country during the severe depression era, the Clover Bend Plantation dwindled. Most of the Negroes had moved to a different freedom. The Slayden brothers, Jim, J.W. and Dr. L. T., having acquired the more than 5000 acres from F.W. Tucker in 1917, lost the plantation to a bank in St. Louis.
In 1937, a transaction was made through the Resettlement Administration to buy the plantation from the St. Louis loan company. The Resettlement Administration was the predecessor of the Farm Security Administration, (FSA), which shaped the government project that established 86 farmsteads from the original Clover Bend Plantation. This project and others like it was shaped in Delta lands with an underlying concern to help deserving families buy their own farms. All of the families involved with the Lawrence County tract had lived at Clover Bend or nearby all their lives and, consequently, they understood the eccentricities of the moderately fertile, sandy soil. This natural understanding of the area meant unusually rapid progress for the project as a whole, and gave Clover Bend a distinct advantage over the other FSA communities.
On the morning of May 4, 1939, after a decade of near starvation for many Lawrence County Farmers, some 36 families gathered on the banks of Black River to receive keys to their new homes. These were the first families chosen from among the many applicants to buy about 45 acres, most of it cleared, with a house, in one of three styles, a large barn, poultry house and other outbuildings. The new landowners signed lease and purchase contracts and, if they kept up their annual payments, were given the deed to their property five years later. The average total cost of a farm was $8,000.00, to be paid back over a 40-year period at some $200.00 per year, which included taxes and insurance. One year after the first 36 houses were built, the government built 50 more.
At the time the Slaydens left, they had about 45 tenant farmers, all of whom were eligible to stay. Sixteen of those farmers decided to stay. Forty acres, by several accounts, was barely enough land to support a family. An average income came from six or seven bales of cotton, cream sales averaging $4.00 and up per week, two dozen crates of sweet potatoes, sale of calf, poultry or hogs.
Each farm had an orchard with apple, peach, pear and plum trees, a garden, cows, hogs and chickens. During these years, the average Clover Bend farm wife came to the end of a crop year with a pantry full of hundreds of quarts of fruits and vegetables and even beef or pork. Several oversize hams swung from the dark interior of the smokehouses.
The FSA live-at-home program and the scientific land-use practices that it utilized was most evident when driving along the roads or lanes in the Clover Bend area. People from elsewhere remember Clover Bend during this period for its freshly painted houses, white picket fences and beautiful flowerbeds. This beautifying movement among the rural dwellers bore no resemblances to the vicinity where once stood swamp water and thicket.
Mary Rudy was hired to run the home management program. Much like a home demonstration agent, she would conduct classes for women in canning and dressmaking. Several people remember her as a formidable personality. If women decided not to attend meetings, she would "just go and get them."
Other FSA employees at Clover Bend were Sid Leatherman, an early foreman, L. C. Jinks, the first manager and George Tanner, the second manager. These men had all left by the early 1940's when, after most farmers had received deeds to their property. The project was managed from offices in Walnut Ridge.
The Clover Bend farmers benefitted from a medical co-operative which was a membership organization. Farmers belonging to this group could pay $12.00 annually plus $1.00 for each member of the family and receive whatever doctor's care and hospitalization they needed for a year with no additional cost. Another beneficial aspect was the co-operatively owned grist mill, mowing machine and other farm equipment. These could be used by any member. Also, farm supplies were purchased and crops were marketed co-operatively. Many of the families used electricity supplied by Rural Electric Association.
Most of the above mentioned programs were part of an effort by the FSA to make the project self-supporting, an effort which was met with only partial success. These cooperative programs were closed or sold during the 1940's.
At one time Clover Bend was called "Punkin Center," because the area raised an abundant supply of pumpkins, canned and sold them through combined efforts, the nickname was attached. This activity took place at the community center during the Farm Security Admimistration control. The center afforded buildings which offered housing for church services, recreation, club meetings and a school. In the ballroom of the larger building, an annual Christmas party was held for everyone in the community to attend. After the large tree was decorated through community effort, each individual in the Clover Bend community received a Christmas Gift.
Children in the area attended high school at Hoxie and grammar school at old Clover Bend. In November 1938, because of the great influx of families with children, the old Clover Bend (2 rooms) was so crowded the School Board (Mr. A. M. Matthews, Ora Hallmark and C. H. Brand) voted to send the 8th grade with the high school students to Hoxie High School by bus. By Christmas 1938, the school was so full that a decision was made to move all students to three completed rooms in the south-east part of the new Community Center. The move began in January. Mr. Bruce Logan, Head Teacher, with a wagon and team and assisted by some helpful parents, loaded the desks and chairs, old metal cupboard, school materials and moved to the three completed rooms in the Center.
The FSA converted the community center building into an educational center, establishing the first permanent Clover Bend School in July 1939. Four small elementary schools (Hopewell, Lauratown, Clover Bend and Duvall) were consolidated to establish Clover Bend's first high school. Some students from Arbor Grove, Minturn, Counts and Coffman came and, altogether, this made an enrollment of well over 200 students at the new school. This was a real asset to the community. Voters did not have to approve construction and were not presented with a bond issue for a school. All grades were housed in the same building.
Set for their practicality to the FSA project, the first vocational educational building was designed with handicraft shop and classrooms. Classes in every phase of homemaking were taught by Alice Dale Holloway. Weldon Elliot was the vocational teacher leading many necessary and locale-oriented projects. A community canning center was operated as a real need. A huge boiler used in that program stands in the rear of the Clover Bend School Cafeteria as a reminder of the years past.
By the end of the first school year, the first graduating class consisted of Marjorie Smith, Marjorie Hallmark and Nova Terry. They graduated in May, 1940. The second graduating class included: Madge Bridges, Bert Coble, Imogene Dobbs, Hazel Fallis, Ada Lady, Dean Matthews and Bernard Matthews.
Numerous school traditions were established in these first years. The student body voted and chose the Eagle as the Clover Bend mascot. Blue and gold were chosen as the school colors. The school news, "The Eagle Screams," was first published in the Times Dispatch.
High school athletics included competitive basketball which was played on an outdoor court. The first basketball team included: Paul King, Ewell Freer, Raymond Hill, James Hill, Junior Niedermeier, Zane Kirkland, Sloan Bennett, Junior Morgan and Eldon Baker. Fred Paxton, the math teacher, served as basketball coach in the 1940-41 school year.
The Clover Bend Administrators in the 1940-41 school term were: E. B. Wilson, Head Teacher and Agriculture Teacher. The teaching staff included: Rachel Rainey, Ben R. Bush, Virginia Whitener, Eugenia Wilson, Nina Ray, Frances Wayland, Freda Mason, Margaret McCampbell, Jewel Lee, Joyce Lee, Alice Holloway, Howard Ratliff, Clarabell Miller and Lois Phillips.
Property was added to the school in 1941 when the government purchased land for sewer development. This transaction was made by the Right of Eminent Domain at a cost of $3000, paid to Guy Morgan. In later years, about one-half acre was purchased from R.S. Rainwater and C. T. Jackson for the purpose of building the high school and lunchroom.
In June 1945, the Farm Security Administration noted that the school had prospered sufficiently. Through negotiations between the Clover Bend Board of Education and the FSA, the land and school was given to the school district. The quickclaim deed which designates ownership, bearing the signature of Eli B. Whitaker, hung in the high school office.
The quickclaim transaction sparked the interest and engulfed the local people with the high quality spirit of support that still denotes the unification of Clover Bend. The first need focused was to separate the elementary and high school units. With a shortage of funds but an abundance of desire, the Clover Bend Future Farmers of America (FFA) under the leadership of Marion Fletcher, built the elementary school building in 1949. The cost of the structure was $6,500.
The Community Center housed Clover Bend School from its inception in 1939 until its death in 1983, with 44 years of rich and exciting history.
In 1983, a heated and divisive consolidation issue tore the community apart, and the school was consolidated with Hoxie. The Clover Bend School Board advertised for bids to demolish the school buildings. It was this action that sparked the ire of graduates of Clover Bend who were not directly involved in the consolidation issue. Many alumni and friends expressed interest in the "Center" being kept available for community use, in keeping with its original purpose. Through dedication and devoted efforts of Rep. Tom Baker, a visit from Governor Bill Clinton and Wilson Stiles, head of the State Historic Preservations, spoke with residents about the preservation of the Center.
With cooperation from Hoxie and Clover Bend Boards of Education, a concerted effort was made to solve problems related to the preservation project. A cross-section of people were brought together to serve on committees. Nine persons accepted the challenge to serve 6-year terms. Through the efforts of this committee and the help of others in the community, the following events have been accomplished since 1983.
The Clover Bend Community Center was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A Volunter Fire Department was organized and housed in the renovated Agriculture Building.
A Certificate of Incorporation to the Association of Non-Profit Cooperations, therefore making gifts tax deductible when given to support this "Center."
Since the placing of the Clover Bend Community Center on the National Register of Historic Places, the Gymnasium, the Home Economics Building, the Fire Department and the Lunchroom have all been added to the State and National Register of Historic Places. This makes all five (5) buildings on the Register.
