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Coal Hill during the 1850's
Elizabeth gave birth to another girl on October 21, 1850. They named her Sarah Jane
Elizabeth, with Elizabeth in a family-way this fall
it was harder than ever to get the cotton to the gin. In the early 1850’s a few other families came into the bottoms and homesteaded land around
Henry.
Some of the families wouldn’t stay and
would sell their land to Henry. He was doing
good raising cotton and at one time owned 3600 acres of land. This was in the early 50’s.
Riverboats were going up and down the river. Henry built a landing for them dock. This land was
called "Weathers landing" of course. This
enabled them to get supplies by way of the boats. The first riverboat to dock there was admired by many of the Cottonwood residents. Josh,
Sallie, and Mary were there to see it come in. They had seen the boats go up and down the river, but this
was the first time they had seen
one up close.
Henry made good on his cotton the last year or two and decided to expand. He made a trip
to New Orleans, Louisiana and bought some more
slaves on the auction block. He also bought a cotton gin and a steam engine to pull the gin with. He planned to gin his own cotton and ship
it to New Orleans on the riverboats and he would gin cotton for other people, so they wouldn’t
have to haul it so far.
A small community formed around the boat landing and cotton gin. They named it Cottonwood.
There was a lot of cottonwood trees around
there and that may be how they named it. In 1854 on February 10, Elizabeth and Henry had another child. They named their last child
Minerva Lavina.
Henry continued to raise cotton and run the gin. He made real good and bought more land. He
even bought some land at Hays Chapple,
between Hartman and Clarksville.
In 1857, William Bates and his wife died. Henry started buying the land off his children. He
bought the land 40 acres at a time for the
next four years and by 61 owned the whole farm.The people of the Cottonwood community built a church. They called it the Cottonwood
Methodist Church. They all got together one day and
started cutting down trees to build the church with. The women cooked and fed the men while they were working on the building. It
was sort
of a picnic day for all of them.
On day, Henry noticed the riverbank caving in and getting very close to their house. If he didn’t
do something soon the house would be in
the river. He decided to move the house further away from the bank. He and the slaves started taking the house apart and marking each log so
they would know where it went when they started to rebuild it. They built it back exactly like it was,
only further away from the river.
Later, Henry added some rooms.
One evening, Henry had a slave to die. He called the others together and informed them of the
death. He told them to take the next couple
of days off to prepare a grave and have a funeral. He was buried on the hill just above the bottoms. One of the colored men preached the
funeral and Henry said a few words over him also.
Henry was never mean to his slaves or had them whipped. He would reward them sometimes
when they worked well. He would order a keg of
whiskey to come in on the riverboat. He would have his daughter, Lavina to go around and give them a shot of whiskey a the end of the day.
If they got too lazy, they weren’t rewarded as well.
They didn’t have a kitchen in the house, but they had built a cookhouse about 20 or 30 feet from
the house. This kept the house from
getting hot in the summer and if it caught on fire it wouldn’t burn the house. Later when the kitchen was in the house it was called the
cook room.By the year 1859 Henry was considered a very wealthy man. He owned 3000 acres of land or
more, although some of the land he bought he
resold for a profit. He owned a Cotton gin and a boat landing. A man that owned that much today would also be considered a wealthy man.
Cottonwood had a doctor to move into their community in the late 50’s. His name was Dr. Robert
W. Senters. He was born in Georgia on
January 18, 1837 and had moved to Tennessee later on. He had gotten into a disagreement over a hunting lodge on look out mountain in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. After this, he came to Johnson County, Arkansas. There were only 13 doctors in
the county in 1860.
Henry couldn’t figure out why a healthy girl like Mary Susan was now seeing a Doctor quite
often. One day when the Doctor came to their
house and he seen the look in her eyes, he knew then what she had in mind. Yes sir, that Mary had taken a shine to young Dr. Senters.Josh had it real easy now, and did a lot of fishing. He caught many a catfish out of the river to
help feed the table. He became a very
good horseman riding in the bottoms every day. He would ride his horse to the hill and hunt game. He didn’t have to work much, with as many slaves as his dad had.
The girls had it easy too, with Evaline doing the cooking and housework. They would learn to sew, quilt, and work the spinning wheel.
Elizabeth and Henry had it easier too. Times were a lot better than when they first came here.
In 1859, Henry received word that his father Wilson had died. Wilson died in Sweetwater
and left a will. By the year 1859, Cottonwood had it’s own schoolhouse. Josh, Sallie, Mary,
and Lavina got their education in this one room schoolhouse. A
schoolteacher would come through and stay with some of the families while teaching school. The parents would have
to pay him for teaching
their children. The teacher would only stay 2 or 3 months then move on elsewhere. Later, they would have their own teacher that lived in
Cottonwood and would teach about 6 months a year.
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