Wynn-Price: Hidden Gem in Garland City

Earlier this month I received a call from a Skip Bernard who was working with a museum organization out of Shreveport, but he lived in Doddridge, Arkansas...to make a long story short, the organization was interested in a historic building in Garland City (in Miller County just east of Texarkana)...this historic home was already on the National Register of Historic Places (since 1992), but it was not in the Arkansas state archaeological site files...moreover, the nomination actually stated that the site could benefit from archaeological work...so they called me...That's how I came to know about the Wynn-Price House.

Last week I met Skip over at the house, and let me say that it a hidden gem in Garland City...to steal words from the AHPP website, "this grand Greek Revival design, luxurious in both plan and elevation, was undoubtedly constructed largely from materials shipped up the Red River from New Orleans and elsewhere (we know that the marble for the two fireplaces was so ordered). The tall imposing two-story portico with its flanking single-story 'temples' must have been one of the most majestic edifices in the region"...it is certainly one of the most complex Greek Revival houses that I have seen in Arkansas...Ironically, I HAVE visited the African-American cemetery associated with the Wynn-Price plantation (known as Wynns Cemetery)....but when I visited it last year (with Anthony Clay Newton), we had no idea that a huge antebellum mansion lay just around the corner...go figure.

The description below is a brief excerpt from the AHPP website entry for the Wynn-Price House...below you also find links to my photographs of the structure and the AHPP entry...I look forward to investigating this house--and its associated plantation--in the near future.

As is frequently the case in Arkansas, attempts to study even significant characters in local or regional antebellum history are frustrated by a lack of primary sources. Reconstructing the life and activities of William Wynn is no different, though we do know through census records, slave ownership records and deed information that he was a successful farmer, and probably growing cotton, the staple crop of the Red River valley during this period. However, when considered within the broader context of American and regional history during the period of 1835 (the first documented date of William Wynn's arrival in the Red River area) to 1861, the primary sources that do survive support certain additional conclusions about Wynn's investment activities and his hopes for the "city" of Garland as a major commercial river and overland transportation crossroads...Though the site probably also retains potential to reveal further information about the occupation of the site by William Wynn, his two sons (the 1840 Lafayette County census indicates two males between the ages of 20 and 30 living with him, though not necessarily at this site) and his slaves, a professional archaeological investigation of the site remains to be done. Such investigation, upon completion, may justify additional areas of significance for the property.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcbrandon/sets/72157603949469598/

http://www.arkansaspreservation.org/historic-properties/_search_nomination_popup.asp?id=5

The Obama-Arkansas Connection

Below is an article by Joy Russell of the Madison County Genealogical & Historical Society. It appeared in the Friday, February 15th, 2008 issue of the Madison County Record.

The current national newscasts are filled with the names of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the top two Democratic candidates for President of the United States of America. The Clintons have been well known to Arkansas residents since the mid-1970’s with Hillary Clinton serving as Arkansas’ First Lady from 1979 to 1992 when her husband, Bill, was Governor of the State. The Clintons were married in Fayetteville on Oct. 11, 1975, and their daughter, Chelsea, was born in Little Rock on Feb. 27, 1980.

However, Obama also has roots that run deep in Northwest Arkansas. Obama’s great-great-great-great-great grandparents were Nathaniel and Sarah (Ray) Bunch, who came to Arkansas about 1840 and settled near Dinsmore, about three miles south of Dry Fork. The community of Dinsmore is in the extreme northwest corner of Newton County and is only about a half-mile from both the Carroll and Madison County lines.

Nathaniel Bunch was born on April 23, 1793, in Virginia and served in the War of 1812 under General Andrew Jackson. Family legends say he took part in the Battle of New Orleans. Soldiers who served in the War of 1812 were given “land bounty certificates,” which entitled them to claim 80 acres of land from the government, and it is believed that Nathaniel Bunch used his land bounty certificate to claim the land that he settled in Arkansas.

Anna Bunch, born in 1814, was the daughter of Nathaniel and Sarah. She married Samuel Thompson Allred in Tennessee and they moved their family to Newton County, Arkansas, about 1845. They were the great-great-great-great grandparents of Barack Obama. Nathaniel and Sarah Bunch, Samuel and Anna (Bunch) Allred, and Samuel’s parents, John and Phoebe (Thompson) Allred, are all buried at Liberty Cemetery near where the Bunch family settled at Dinsmore. There are many graves of the Bunch and Allred families in this cemetery, most of whom are relatives of Barack Obama.

Frances A. Allred, daughter of Samuel and Anna, was born in 1834 and married Joseph Samuel Wright. On Aug. 11, 1869, Margaret Bell Wright was born to Frances and Joseph. Margaret married Thomas C. McCurry in Chautaugua County, Kansas, on March 13, 1885. Margaret and Thomas McCurry were the great-great grandparents of Obama, and their daughter, Leona McCurry, married Rolla Charles Payne in 1922. Both Leona and Rolla were born in Kansas, lived there, and are
buried there.

Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Lee Payne, was born to Leona and Rolla in October 1922, and married Stanley Armour Dunham in 1940. Their daughter, Shirley Ann Dunham, married Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., in 1960 but they were divorced in 1963.

Their son, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was born on Aug. 4, 1961, and is now an Illinois senator vying for the U.S. Presidency. Barack Obama still has many cousins in this area, including the Bunch, Holt, Combs, Hargis, Wright, and Stamps families. Further information on the genealogy of Barack Obama can be found at the Madison County Genealogical and Historical Society.

The Fate of the Woodruff House...

Listed on Arkansas’s 2007 "Most Endangered Places" by The Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, the Woodruff House remains one of Arkansas’s most notable properties...Unfortunately, it stands a very serious chance of being lost forever, unless larger forces intervene.

First, the back story (drawn largely from The Quapaw Quarter Association's web site). In 1851 Mr. William E. Woodruff, founder of The Arkansas Gazette, bought 23 1/3 acres of land, then just outside the city limits, on the East side of the city. His family was growing so rapidly he wished more rooms for them, also to gratify his own desire and love for a desirable country home, and the leisure and privacy that such a home afforded him. Facing Ninth Street, near College Street, he built a beautiful substantial two and one-half story thirteen room, brick home, full of comfort and so roomy (7,000 sq. ft.) that not only his own family, but many friends and many strangers found pleasure visiting within its walls. The immediate enclosure about his home and garden occupied ten city blocks (today it has been winnowed down to three lots).

When the Federal army took possession of Little Rock, the Woodruff House was confiscated. This lovely old home, with the exception of two rooms allowed for Mrs. Woodruff to occupy, was used for the white officers of a black Union regiment as their headquarters, and later used as a hospital for Federal officers. After the war, the family occupied it again until Mr. Woodruff died on June 19, 1885. After Mr. Woodruff's death the home became the property of the oldest child, Alden Mills Woodruff, and he and his family occupied it for a period of five years, from July, 1886, to March, 1891.

At the turn of the century, the house was remodeled into apartments, and fronted on East Eighth Street. In September, 1921, it was purchased for a home for business girls and was renamed “The Business Girls Cottage Home." It was last used as apartments, but a fire in recent years damaged some of the rooms. It now needs total restoration.

Its prime location near the Clinton Presidential Center, the headquarters of Heifer International, and the future Lion’s World Services for the Blind Headquarters, puts it at possible risk of being eventually demolished for a hotel, condos, or other retail establishment. However, an even more immediate threat is the high level of vagrant activity in the area. Preservationists are all too painfully aware of what happened to the historic Mosaic Templars Building in March of 2005--destroyed by fire. The same fate could befall the Woodruff House as well if immediate steps are not taken to secure and protect the property.

It would be a tremendous loss for Little Rock and the State of Arkansas if this home was not preserved and refurbished.

I am, of course, a bit biased...I am interested in the Woodruff House from not only a preservation perspective, but also an archeological one. The Woodruff House is a prime example of what my colleague Leslie C. "Skip" Stewart-Abernathy has calls an "urban farmstead." The house once had a substantial garden to the east of the structure, and north of the house was the servants' quarters, a wood yard, a large chicken house, barns, and other ancillary structures one would expect to find on a nineteenth century farm of the genteel class. On the west side was a large laundry house built over a large cistern, which furnished the water for washing. Farther to the West extending to Rector Avenue was a fine orchard, cornfield, potato patch, and so on. Archeological excavations at the Woodruff house could not only shed light on the daily life of the Woodruff family--an important family in Arkansas history by all measures--but it could also give us insights into the workings of these urban farmsteads, the trauma of the Civil War in Little Rock, the dawning of the modern, consumer age and what life was life for those enslaved in the urban South.

The Arkansas Archeological Survey is looking for ways that we can help save and conduct research on the Woodruff House as we speak. And I hope to report in the near future that either myself of Dr. Stewart-Abernathy will begin work on the project soon...In the meantime, consider donating to The Quapaw Quarter Association's effort to save the Woodruff House...

click here to donate