Julie Moncrief is one of those people -- the ones who see a gap, a need, and can't help trying to fill it.
So when she joined the Clayton House museum as executive director in June 2011, one of the first things Moncrief did was start a Sunday series called Clayton Conversations.
FAQ
Clayton Conversations:
Family History Share Series
WHEN — Second seating available at 3:15 p.m. Sunday
WHERE — Clayton House in Fort Smith
COST — Free for members of the Fort Smith Heritage Foundation or a $10 donation
INFO — 783-3000
FYI
Clayton Conversations
Coming Soon
March 22 — Benjamin Shipley and his father, Harry Shipley Jr., talking about the Shipley Baking Company of Fort Smith.
April 26 — Fort Smith native Joe Irwin on “Railroads to Splendor: Family Roots,” focusing on 1800s railroad entrepreneur Angus MacLeod on his mother’s side as well as the three Joseph C. Irwin generations on his father’s side.
Reservations are already being accepted at 783-3000.
"I had been director of Leadership Fort Smith, and I loved getting people together to learn from someone in the community," she says. "And it was easy to find community leaders who had expertise on all kinds of historical topics."
The series was a success, bringing scores of new people in to the authentically restored circa 1882 home of U.S. Attorney William H. H. Clayton, Moncrief says, and this year, the new "Clayton Conversations: Family History Share Series" is taking off with a bang. The first installment, scheduled for Sunday, will feature retired Fort Smith attorney Thomas B. Pryor III, and the first seating has already filled up. Pryor will speak again at 3:15 p.m.
"Because this is a family home, we thought the new Family History Share Series would be an appropriate way to help our citizens learn and celebrate our heritage," Moncrief says. "And Mr. Pryor has tons of stories."
Pryor will show and discuss photographs that reach back through the life of his grandfather, Thomas Brady Pryor. Born in 1869, the senior Pryor passed the bar exam in 1893, Moncrief recounts, and practiced in Greenwood before associating with the Fort Smith law firm of Miles, Pryor & Miles in 1908. Thomas "Brady" Pryor Jr. worked with his father at the firm for 25 years, and the grandson did the same from his 1956 graduation from law school to his retirement at the end of 2006.
Pryor will also share the Harris and Ward family roots of his mother, Dorothy Harris Pryor, that reach back to Frances Marion Ward, a captain in the Union Army of the Civil War who raised his family in the Fort Smith area, using some of the family photos and letters he has gathered over the years.
"Some of them came to me by chance or coincidence, but as I've grown older, I've really enjoyed working at it," he says.
-- Becca Martin-Brown
NAN What's Up on 02/20/2015