It's like stepping back in time as we drive down the dirt road through fields white with cotton in far southeast Arkansas. We're approaching the Lakeport Plantation, where we'll hear a lecture by University of Arkansas at Monticello history professor Kyle Day about UAM's efforts to preserve historic sites in southeast Arkansas.
A school far to the north, Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, restored the Lakeport Plantation after the antebellum home was given to ASU by Sam Angel of the Epstein Land Co. The Lakeport Plantation was established by Joel Johnson in 1831.
Lycurgus Johnson was 28 years old when his father Joel died in 1846. By 1860, the younger Johnson owned 4,400 acres and 155 slaves. Lycurgus Johnson died in 1876, but the plantation remained in the family until 1927, the year of the great flood along the Mississippi River. Lycurgus Johnson's son Victor sold Lakeport to Sam Epstein for $30,000. Epstein had been born on a farm near Riga, Latvia, in the former Russian Empire in 1875 and arrived in New York City as a Jewish immigrant in May 1896. Sam Epstein was among the many Jewish peddlers who worked up and down the Mississippi River. By the late 1890s, he and his brother had a mercantile business at Luna Landing in Chicot County. In 1900, Sam Epstein started a business in Lake Village. He saved his money, sleeping on a counter in the store until 1907, when he married Becke Ruth Eisenberg, the daughter of Russian immigrants in Little Rock. He also began acquiring Delta farmland.
One of Epstein's daughters said in a 1982 interview: "He liked farming more than the store. He just started buying land. On Sundays we would take him out in the car, and he would get out and walk the whole field."
Following Epstein's death in 1944, son-in-law Ben Angel began managing the estate. Ben Angel's son, Sam Epstein Angel, later took over the Epstein Land Co., which by then had grown to almost 13,000 acres. Sam Epstein's daughter, Sylvia Angel, and a grandson, Rodney Angel, were instrumental in getting the house at Lakeport placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Sam Angel donated the house to ASU in 2001, and Arkansas historic preservation legend Ruth Hawkins made it a part of the school's Delta Heritage Initiative.
Sam Angel, who was born in 1939 and became president of the Epstein Land Co. in 1969, is the longest-serving civilian member of the Mississippi River Commission. The fields surrounding Lakeport are still farmed by the Epstein Land Co., and the cotton is almost ready to be picked on this late September Thursday. Southeast Arkansas has been losing population since the 1950s due to the mechanization of agriculture, but the history is so thick a visitor can almost feel it. UAM has plans to preserve and interpret three historic sites in the region--the office once used by Xenaphon Overton Pindall in Arkansas City, the 1846 Taylor House at Winchester and what remains of Camp Monticello, a World War II POW camp for Italian soldiers.
Though its population dwindled from 1,485 residents in 1910 census to 366 people in 2010, Arkansas City remains the Desha County seat. Prior to the Great Flood of 1927, it was a major trade center on the Mississippi River. There was even an opera house by 1891. All of that changed after the flood, which not only devastated the town but caused the river channel to shift a mile to the east. The town still boasts historic sites, some of them preserved by Robert Moore Jr., an Arkansas City native and former speaker of the state House of Representatives. Pindall's former law office is among those sites. Pindall was acting governor from May 1907 until January 1909. He was elected to the state Senate in a 1907 special election. At the end of the 1907 legislative session, Pindall was selected as Senate president pro tempore, taking on the duties of governor due to the incapacity of Gov. John Little. Pindall had practiced law and served as an assistant prosecuting attorney before being elected to the Arkansas House in 1902.
The Taylor House is a log house in the dogtrot style that served as headquarters for a cotton plantation along the Bayou Bartholomew in Drew County. John Martin Taylor came from a wealthy Kentucky family and raised cotton in southeast Arkansas with a large labor force of slaves prior to the Civil War. He continued to run the plantation with sharecroppers after the war. Taylor died in 1884, but his children operated the farm, expanding it to 11,000 acres. Due to erosion along the banks of the Bayou Bartholomew, the house was moved back from its original site.
"In spite of these changes, the log construction of the 1846 dogtrot remains, and in relatively good condition," according to a document from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.
Down the road in Monticello, the site of Camp Monticello is now used by UAM's forestry school and the Drew County Fair. A cafeteria smokestack can still be seen in a forest. Up to 3,800 POWs were housed here. Camp Monticello was the only POW camp in the state housing Italians. Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, Camp Chaffee in Fort Smith and Camp Dermott in Chicot County were used to house Germans from Gen. Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.
From an antebellum log home to a brick law office to a World War II POW camp, UAM has now stepped in to preserve part of the heritage of a region that's often ignored by those in other parts of Arkansas.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 10/01/2014