Holly Grove News Sept. 5, 1935 "After passing around a petition and securing rights to hold an election to determine whether whiskey should be in Holly Grove (the date to be Tuesday, Sept. 3). The election was not held. According to Sheriff H.K. McKenzie, it was not postponed, but in sports it would be known as a default. It will be necessary to go through with the whole procedure again before another date may be set for an election."
Monroe County Sun
Holly Grove News Jan. 2, 1947 "Those from Holly Grove who attended the Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans on New Year’s Day were Mr. and Mrs. Hinton Williamson, Mr. and Mrs. Ruel Sain, Mr. and Mrs. O.M. Washington, Sonny Gordon, Walker Lambert, Beverly Lambert, D.A. McNeill, and Rudolph Calloway."
Monroe County Sun
Oct. 3, 1935 Holly Grove Oil Well is Spudded In Drilling Operations Began Sunday on 640 Acre Lease Four Miles Southeast of Holly Grove, With Experienced Oil Men in Charge of Job "Holly Grove’s oil well was spudded in at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday before a large number of interested spectators. The well is located on the SE quarter of section 19, township one south, range one west, 300 yards north of the Walker crossing on the Helena Midland Railway between Holly Grove and Palmer. The location is about 4 miles from Holly Grove by road. Memphis capital is said to be backing the venture, which is in the hands of J.R. Lockhart and Mike Kissick, two oil well men of years experience. They have a 125 foot derrick and power is supplied by an oil burning boiler. Their drilling equipment is said to be the most modern on the market, and they have announced their intention of giving the area in which they are working a thorough test for both oil and gas. Citizens of the county will watch the well with interest and all are pulling for our Holly Grove friends and neighbors to have the best of luck on the final outcome."
-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 15:49, 2005-11-14
A few more old news "bits and pieces" that I came across...
Brinkley Argus Jan. 20, 1898 "Mrs. C.C. Smith escaped what might have been a serious accident Sunday. As she was standing in front of the fireplace, her dress caught on fire. Her daughter, Scott, fortunately succeeded in putting out the fire, getting slight burns on her hands."
Brinkley Argus Sept. 15, 1898 "Mr. John Renfro, Jim Taylor, and Roy Renfro and Misses Daisy Boyce, Georgia and Rosa Lambert went down to Valley Grove Sunday to attend church."
Brinkley Argus Feb. 23, 1906 "D.B. Renfro, Sr. left on the local last Monday on his way to Memphis where he will buy a carload of mules to supply the demand of mules around Holly Grove."
Monroe County Citizen Feb. 12, 1925 "Dr. C.S. Thompson, Little Rock optometrist, will fit glasses at the Matthews drug store here this week."
-- Edited by Danyelle at 13:55, 2005-07-17
-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 15:44, 2005-11-14
"The streets of this thriving little town of Holly Grove are a hustle and bustle of activity during the fall season, with cotton as the main product."
"The town located in a very fertile farming district with a number of gins to which wagons, trucks, and trainels, loaded with seed cotton, come for various surrounding communities. These gins turn out between 12,000 and 15,000 bales per year."
"Holly Grove has made rapid progress in its growth, which originated from a plantation store and a house or two, to a population of 800 people. This was when Lawrenceville was county seat of Monroe County and steamboats held sway over the field of commerce and was a very active business center in the area."
"As the railroad pushed westward from Helena about 1868, a shakeup in the population occurred, when eventually made Lawrenceville non-existent and promoted the growth of Holly Grove. Railroads stretched out over Monroe and Phillips Counties enticed the merchants to build businesses beside the tracks, in the little town in the holly trees to the north."
"As the town progressed, a town pump, just an old fashioned hand pump erected on the street for the benefit of the tired, thirsty farmers and their teams of horses and mules. The wagons and mules were practically the only means of transportation of the seed cotton to the gins. A watering trough for the animals to drink their fill of the cool, clean water, started a trend toward these gins. The pump still stands as a memorial of bygone days."
"This town of cotton, with soybeans and rice as "extras" is headed by Mayor Ralph Abramson, planter and merchant. The town has four aldermen, a city recorder and chief of police. Holly Grove is on a natural gas line and has its own water works. Its fire department is modern and fully equipped with a new heavy duty fire truck."
"Residents of Holly Grove are proud of their schools. The consolidated white school has about 600 students. Not far to the south are Maddox Bay, East Lake, and Indian Bay, well known to duck hunters and fisherman all over the county."
The following information on early schools in the Holly Grove area is a portion of a letter that ran in the Nov. 9, 1906, issue of The Brinkley Argus.
Holly Grove, Ark., 1906
Dear ARGUS,
... In about 1856, on a little spot of ground, now in the north part of Capt. Tom Mull's yard, stood a crude, log schoolhouse which today can be seen near the house of Mr. Davis Dial. In this house was taught the first school what later became the community and later still the beautiful, modern town of Holly Grove.
John Cocke taught the first session in this schoolhouse, and this was taught by private subscription.
Rev. John Shafer, a young Methodist minister who was transferred from an Oklahoma conference, and came in company with our townsman, W.D. Kerr, to Arkansas to begin the arduous duties of a pioneer preacher and leader, taught the second session, or rather began the second session, of school in 1860, in this same little log schoolhouse. But finding he could not serve his people to the full extent of his duties as a preacher and teacher, Mr. Shafer came to his friend, W.D. Kerr, and prevailed on him to take the school and teach out the unexpired term. This Mr. Kerr did in a successful and fruitful manner. Among some of the pupils of Prof. Kerr were: Miss Susie Smith (now Mrs. D.B. Renfro Sr.), Mr. Jim Cocke, Col. Tull Smith, Tom Pickins and Bush Roberts.
The first "free school" was possibly taught in Holly Grove in 1858. There were no free schools in our country until after the Civil War. A Mr. Wagant was the man that after preserving efforts secured the organized work and added the free schools in this section.
Judge W.D. Kerr, the third teacher of the Holly Grove school, became one of the directors.
Out of these primitive conditions, and from this worthy foundation, has grown our modern school facilities, with a special district, good equipment in every way, seldom excelled throughout Arkansas by a town of people near the size of ours.
Today our school is doing 9 grades of work, and is furnished with the best and latest textbooks of our day, and is presided over by W.A. Owens, during the nine month term each year ...
signed, As Initio
[from "A Few Events and Occurrences in the History of Brinkley, Arkansas, and Surrounding Towns and Communities of the Central Delta Through 1935," Henry A. Wilks, 1997]
There was a murder trial in 1898, and my gg-grandfather, D.B. Renfro, served on the jury. I don't know if Jake Johnson was murdered or if Jake Johnson did the murdering, but I'm guessing that this is the same Jake Johnson who owned the saloon.
Does anyone remember a "canning kitchen" around Holly Grove? The following is reported in "A Few Events and Occurrences in the History of Brinkley, Arkansas, and Surrounding Towns and Communities of the Central Delta Through 1935," compiled by Henry A. Wilks, 1997:
The Emergency Relief Association (ERA) helpled form canning kitchens for rural communities during the Depression. Steam pressures and sealers were supplied by the ERA, while the kitchens were built and equipped by the communities they served.
Anyone could bring their vegetables, fruits, etc. to the kitchens to be canned, as long as they furnished their own labor. After the canning was completed, a toll of 1 out of 5 was kept and turned in to the commissary. Anyone who furnished their own cans or glass jars paid a toll of 1 out of 10.
Here are some of the local kitchens and their supervisors in the Holly Grove area:
White: Holly Grove - Mrs. E. McCastlain Shiloh - Mrs. Earl Cook Ragtown - Mrs. Robert Hughan (Hughen?) Lawrenceville - Mrs. H.E. Harrod Palmer - Annie Hughen
Black: Holly Grove - Safronfa Guess Pine City - Cynthia Weems
The following "miscellaneous notes and facts" relating to Holly Grove are published in "A Few Events and Occurrences in the History of Brinkley, Arkansas, and Surrounding Towns and Communities of the Central Delta Through 1935," compiled by Henry A. Wilks, 1997. No sources are given.
The area of Holly Grove and vicinity was first called "Fussy Ridge," so named by Frank Kerr.
Holly Grove's first store was opened by D.B. Renfro and its first saloon was owned by Jake Johnson.
In April 1891, while Clarendon had been under water for two weeks, Circuit Court was unable to be held. Mayor Cohen canvassed Monroe County to have the county seat moved to Holly Grove. Brinkley then tries to gain support to obtain the county seat. M. Kelly donates one acre in Brinkley for a courthouse, but Clarendon raises funds to build a levee as soon as the water subsides, helping keep the county seat in Clarendon.
April 1912: Holly Grove officials are: E.B. Williams, Mayor; H.C. Lair, Recorder; P.C. Mayo, J.W. Renfro, Rue Abramson, R.J. Lambert and Dr. T.B. Sylar, aldermen.
Here's some information about newspapers published at Holly Grove:
In 1917, C.O. Wahlquist and Hosea Keeling published the Holly Grove Leader newspaper in Holly Grove in a frame building on North Main Street, located across from the old cotton platform.
Hosea Keeling, who was originally from Leslie, Arkansas, was brought to Holly Grove by Wahlquist. Keeling was only 3 1/2 feet tall and he walked with two crutches. Keeling eventually bought the paper from the Wahlquists.
While Wahlquist ran the paper, he commuted each day from his home in Marvell, Arkansas. He traveled 28 miles each day on a motorcycle along a curving gravel raod that went through Blackton on the way to Marvell.
In 1920, A.C. Graham bought the paper and the name was changed to the Holly Grove Enterprise. Soon afterwards, the paper ceased operation and the plant eventually was bought back by the Wahlquist family, who published the Clarendon Herald in 1950. This paper was bought by W.H. Parker in July 1950, but publication was suspended in October of that year when Parker became general manager of the Arkansas Press Association.
A group from Mount Ida, Arkansas, bought the plant and it is publishing a paper in that town the same press that the Leader was printed on in 1917.
(Information obtained from the files of the Arkansas Press Association and C.O. Wahlquist.)
-- The Sentinel newspaper, Clarendon, Ark., Aug. 9, 1978
Several years ago, someone recommended I find and read this article while doing genealogical research....thought I'd share it...
Brinkley Argus
Dec. 22, 1932
How Holly Grove Got Its Name
Turning her eyes upward and a smile on her face, there seemed to come before her a pleasant reminiscence of bygone days, and happily recalling that first cold, bleak snowy Christmas seventy-nine years ago, which she spent in Monroe County, Mrs. Lizzie Cocke, Holly Grove’s oldest citizen gladly related that first Christmas, spent six miles east of Holly Grove, called now Frank’s place near Franks Cemetery. Elizabeth Hess, one of five children aged seven with father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. D.H. Hess left Lecemset County Alabama, the 22nd of November, 1853 in covered wagons, and along with them came Jere Dial and family and Jim Kerr and family with their negroes, thirty of whom belonged to Mr. Hess. One who is living in Holly Grove now, Aunt Adaline Horn, who was the cook for the Hess family as they camped along the way, taking one month to traverse the distance. Landing at their destination the 22nd of December, where all the families stopped in one house, cooking the Christmas dinner on a fire place. But considering all inconveniences and obstacles, their happiness seemed unsurpassed. Mrs. Cocke says that there was no Holly Grove there. Only a vast wilderness of holly trees and other trees where wild animals lived and that only a few settlers were here then. Thus Holly Grove obtains its name from the vast grove of hollies. Mrs. Cocke is now eighty-five years old and is still one of Holly Grove’s most interesting citizens.
Monroe County Citizen Feb. 19, 1925 “Holly Grove is to have a gasoline filling station. The Standard Oil Company is making the installation.”
The Monroe County Sun Apr. 4, 1935 “The municipal election for the city of Holly Grove on Tuesday was a quiet affair. After the ballots were counted, these were found to be the results: G.W. Wester was elected mayor; D.H. Cocke recorder; B.J. Lamber, Rue Abramson, H.D. (?), D.M. Washington, and L.G. Renfro, Sr., alderman.”
The Monroe County Sun Sept. 30, 1954 “Mrs. Jim Matthews Entertains Tuesday with Noon Luncheon” “Mrs. Jim Matthews entertained at a 12 o’clock at her home Tuesday, having several out-of-town guests. Pink and red roses from the hostess’ garden decorated the reception rooms. Guests were seated in the dining room, where red roses in a silver bowl were placed on a white linen cloth. Guests were eight women who were girlhood friends, but who had become separated through the years. Some of them had not seen each other for 35 years. Those present were Mrs. (?) T. Featherston, Knoxville, Tenn.; Mrs. John McCain, Pine Bluff; Mrs. Hattie Trotter, St. Louis; Mrs. Burton Moore, Clarendon; and from Holly Grove Mrs. L.G. Renfro, Mrs. B.J. Lambert, Miss Lizzie Renfro, and Mrs. J.W. Mayo. After luncheon, the hostess entertained on the large porch adjoining the living room and received other visitors who called during the afternoon.”
-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 15:49, 2005-11-14
