Today I’m continuing my series on Little Rock, Ark.’s Mount Holly Cemetery. Let’s start with this monument to two wives. But their husband isn’t buried with them. That got me interested enough to do some research. Who was R.W. Dawson and where did he end up?

It turns out he might have known some of my family back in the day.

A British Photographer in America

Born in Lancashire, England in 1833, Robert Wolstenholme (R.W.) Dawson was the son of Henry and Alice Wolstenholme Dawson. Sometime before 1850, the family emigrated to America and settled in Connecticut. R.W. married Lucy Freeman in Vienna, Wisc. in 1860 and settled couple in the Elgin, Ill. area.

I was surprised to find that by 1870, the Dawsons had moved to Blair, Neb. Long-time readers of this blog may remember that one of my first “hops” was in small rural Blair where my ancestor, Rufus Claar, settled during the same time period. Rufus married, farmed, raised a family, and died in Blair. It’s likely that the Claars knew the Dawsons because R.W. worked as a photographer in Blair for several years.

R.W. and Lucy had four children together: Clara (1861), Alva (1862), Nelson (1865), and Charles (1866). By 1880, they had left Nebraska to settle in Little Rock where R.W. opened a photography studio. Later, the boys would work with their father in his studio. You can see some of his work here.

Lucy died on April 3, 1884 at age 43. Her obituary states she’d suffered from heart disease for some time. R.W. remarried on April 28, 1886 to Laura Eldridge Robinson Hamilton. Laura died on Jan. 31, 1888 giving birth to their daughter, Irene. Sadly, Irene died on Aug. 24, 1890. Robert’s daughter, Elva, who married local pressman Robert Butler, died on April 25, 1889 at age 26. She is buried in the Dawson plot beside her mother.

I noticed that Laura’s inscription is prominently displayed on the front while Lucy’s is on the side. I believe it was likely erected after Laura’s death and the inscriptions for both were made then.

R.W. eventually moved to California, perhaps wanting to escape the pain of the deaths of his two wives and two daughters behind him. He married widow Susan Kirk Neal in 1894. In 1905, R.W. fell while at his church and cut a nerve. Three years later, a stroke rendered him mostly paralyzed. R.W. died on May 18, 1910 at age 76. He and Susan are buried in Sunnyside Cemetery in Longbeach, Calif.

Wives of a Real Estate Baron

Then there are times I run into the next situation where the first wife is memorialized with a large, elaborate monument and wife #2… Well, let’s just say some may think she got the short end of the stick (or monument).

Born in Darlington, S.C. in 1846, Benjamin William Green was the son of Judge James Green and Sarah Ann Green. The family was living in Dalton, Ga. when Benjamin joined Company D of the First Georgia Infantry regiment on Nov. 1, 1863. By the time he enlisted, the regiment had become part of the forces fighting in the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Green rose to the rank of sergeant major. He and his five brothers all served in the Confederate Army.

In the 1870s, the Green family moved to Arkansas, settling in Hope where Green worked as county treasurer. He owned various real estate properties, and was part owner of Cummins plantation in the Pine Bluff area. Eventually, he settled in Little Rock where he worked in real estate.

On Oct. 5, 1875, Green married Anna Leroy Pope of Nashville. Tenn. I don’t believe the two ever had any children. She died on Oct. 26, 1880 at age 32. By that time, Benjamin had added “cotton mills superintendent” to his list of titles.

In the 1880s, Green headed a division of the U.S. Treasury, served as major general in the Arkansas National Guard, was president of the state Sons of the American Revolution, and served in various roles in the United Confederate Veterans.

Green married Miriam “Minnie” Dodge Green, a native of Vermont, in 1887. On Feb. 3, 1888, their daughter, Alice, was born in Washington, D.C. She married cotton sales agent Robert Warren in 1908. The couple were living with Benjamin and Minnie with their children in 1920, according to the U.S. Census.

Benjamin Green died on Jan. 15, 1924 after a brief illness. Minnie died on Jan. 6, 1927 at age 67. She and Benjamin share a small marker beside Anna’s towering monument.

While Minnie’s memorial is much smaller, she does get to share it with Benjamin. Considering she was married to him for 37 years compared to the five he had with Anna, it makes sense that they would have one together.

“The Sea of Glass”

Sometimes I don’t see interesting things until later when I’m going through my pictures. In this case, it took looking at someone else’s picture to see it because mine was so poor.

I was literally running through Mount Holly that day (playing Beat the Clock, or rather Beat the Gate Locker), snapping photos here and there. The late afternoon sun made some of those photos very dark. The next few are an example of that, so I apologize for the quality.

Minnie Dodge Green had several siblings and one of them was older brother George Eugene Dodge, born in 1845. Although the Dodges hailed from Vermont, they’d moved to Arkansas a few years before that. George attended law school in Albany, N.Y., graduating in 1867. He returned to Little Rock and formed a partnership in 1871 with Benjamin S. Johnson. They represented what was then known as the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad. The firm, now known as Friday, Eldredge & Clark LLP, still exists today.

George married Madalein “Mattie” Perdue Osborne sometime before 1868. They had several children. Their son, Osborn, was born on Sept. 6, 1868. Younger son Edward nearly died of scarlet fever but was nursed back to health. Sadly, Osborn caught the illness and did not survive. He died on Jan. 26, 1881 at age 12.

Only when I looked at another photo of Osborn’s handsome monument on Find a Grave.com did I see the epitaph written at the base that said, “He Walks with the Harpers by the Sea of Glass.” At first, I had no idea what that could be from but the words “sea of glass” made me think it was Biblical. I found I was right. It comes from Revelation 15:2: “And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.”

Sadly, Edward was found dead in his hotel room in St. Louis, Mo. on Jan. 23, 1900 at age 23. He had overdosed on morphine. Edward had recently moved to that city to start a new bookkeeping job. He left behind two sealed letters, one for his father and the other for an unnamed young lady. Edward is buried beside his parents.

George Dodge died in 1904 in Cincinnati, Ohio at age 58 due to heart problems. Mattie died in 1921 at age 73.

A South Carolina Hunley Connection

While going through my Mount Holly photos, I made another discovery. I had photographed a cenotaph for Seaman Charles L. Sprague. A cenotaph is a memorial stone for a person who is buried elsewhere or whose body was never recovered. Charles was born in Little Rock on Feb. 6, 1842 to the Rev. Alden Sprague and Sophronia Eldridge Sprague. They both passed away when Charles was a boy.

According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Charles enlisted in his cousin’s Confederate artillery battery after the Civil War broke out. Charles joined Captain John W. Eldridge’s Company of Light Artillery on May 20, 1862, at Corinth, Miss., which would become J. W. Mebane’s battery after Eldridge was removed from command during a reorganization. Sprague’s service records are divided into two groups, the first listing him as C. L. Sprague and ending with the notation “knows something about torpedoes.” That knowledge would seal his fate.

You can read more about it here, but Charles would become a member of the second crew that piloted the ill-fated Confederate submarine, the Hunley, under the command of Horace Hunley, its inventor. On the morning of Oct. 15, 1863, the vessel set out into Charleston Harbor.

Hunley apparently erred in regulating the amount of water in the forward ballast tank, causing the vessel’s bow to bury itself in the mud. The ship partially filled with water, and its crew, including Hunley and Sprague, either drowned or were asphyxiated. All of the crew were buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, S.C., along with the dead of the earlier accident.

On Feb. 17, 1864, the Hunley attacked the USS Housatonic with an explosive device attached to a spar protruding from the submarine’s bow. The U.S. warship sank, and the Hunley and its third crew were also lost. The Hunley was located in 1995 and raised.

I have visited Magnolia Cemetery many times. It’s where all three Hunley crews are buried and I’ve photographed those graves. I was able to find the marker for Charles Sprague among the others in my pictures. When I took that picture (and I’m not sure when it was), I had no idea that one day I would photograph his cenotaph in Arkansas. His parents are buried near it.

Hungry for more tales from Mount Holly Cemetery? There are more coming soon.

I’m still lingering at Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock, Ark.

Mount Holly has a community mausoleum that was built in 1917 by architects Charles L. Thompson and Thomas Harding, Jr. It was locked up when I was there. But there’s a single mausoleum that caught my eye that I wanted to share with you.

The E.G. Thompson mausoleum is a handsome one. I’m not sure when it was built. But Edward Thompson’s obituary makes it clear that he was “considered one of the wealthiest men in Little Rock” and the mausoleum reflects that.

A Man of Means

Born in 1850 in Missouri, Edward Grady Thompson graduated from LaGrange College in Missouri in 1871. He joined his brother, William J. Thompson, in Augusta, Ark. The brothers married sisters. Edward married Frances “Fannie” Gregory in 1872 and William married her sister, Sarah Gregory.

Fannie, the younger of the two sisters, was born in 1853 at The Point, her parents William Nathan Gregory and Mary Bland Gregory’s plantation in Woodruff County, Ark. She and Edward had three daughters during their marriage: Leah (1873-1943), Helen (1883-1953), and Lottie (1857-1935).

In 1891, the Thompsons moved to Little Rock. Edward and William Thompson, with Rufus W. Martin, built the railroad from Brinkley to Newport, Ark., leasing it to the Rock Island system. Edward and William were also prominent bankers, planters, and merchants.

The death of Fannie on Feb. 23, 1908 was unexpected. She was staying with daughter Leah, who had become Mrs. Leah Rose. Leah had been suffering from a bad headache. When Leah awoke from a nap, she found her mother lying on the bed nearby breathing heavily. Fannie died soon after. She was only 54.

Edward remarried in 1910 to wealthy widow Erminie Waters Sager, who was 42 when they wed. Edward died on March 3, 1921 at age 70. Erminie died in 1958. She is buried at Roselawn Memorial Park in Little Rock. Edward, Fannie, and daughter Lottie Thompson Clise are all interred within the mausoleum.

The stained glass window inside the Thompson mausoleum is unlike any I have seen before. At the bottom are what appear to be a field of daffodils or lilies. Above them is a dove in flight, looking down. A crown of thorns with a star in the center, superimposed over a cross, completes the picture. A chunk of the glass is missing, unfortunately. But it is still lovely to see.

In the Prime of Life

Peculiar causes of death always intrigue me. It didn’t hurt that Sydney Jordan Johnson had a large monument with his face in profile on it.

Born in 1866 in Lincoln County, Ark., Sydney was the son of Richard Henry Johnson and Anna Newton Johnson. Richard was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1860. Sydney was very close with his brothers, Allen, James, and John. Sydney got his degree from Central University in Richmond, Ky. in 1885 and returned to Arkansas. He and his brother, Allen, formed S.J. Johnson & Co. in 1893 and prospered.

In 1892, Sydney married Wilson Norfleet, a Mississippi belle. He continued to do well in business, taking on the role of director of Little Rock’s Exchange National Bank.

In early February, Sydney took a break from his busy business schedule to go “coasting” on Rapley Hill with a party of friends. Amid the frivolity, he broke his leg and was confined to his home for five weeks. He seemed to be on the mend but his doctor warned that a heart ailment might pose a complication. With his brothers and wife by his side, Sydney took a turn for the worse and died on March 17, 1899 at age 33.

Sydney and Wilson had no children during their marriage. She remarried to Georgia attorney Thomas Brailsford Felder, Jr. in 1906. His first wife, Charlotte, died in 1904. Thomas died in 1926 and is buried in Northview Cemetery in Dublin, Ga., where he served as mayor. Wilson died in 1949 at age 79 and is buried with her parents in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tenn.

A Railroad Conductor’s Family

The monument to Ransom Sylvester (R.S.) Page grabbed my attention for the visual trick it plays on your eyes. It is a broken column, carved that way on purpose. A well-known railroad conductor in Little Rock, R.S. was active in many fraternal organizations, from the Masons to the Elks to the Knights of Pythias.

The broken column has significance to the Masons for a number of reasons. But in terms of cemetery symbolism it represents a life cut short. As I began to look into the lives of the Page family, this became a recurring theme.

A native of Ohio, R.S. first married Julia Dean in 1876 in Iowa. He left her in November 1882 and the marriage ended in divorce with no children. He married Louise “Lulu” Warren soon after and their daughter, also named Lulu, was born in 1882. The family settled in Little Rock. Son Ransom Jr. was born in 1885, son Harry in 1889, and daughter Opal in 1896.

Having worked for the railroad in different capacities since the age of 15, R.S. was well liked in the community and active in those earlier mentioned civic groups. But in 1898 his health began to falter and he contracted tuberculosis. He died on Dec. 23, 1899 and his funeral was held on Christmas Eve. He was 43. Several members of the local lodges he belonged to attended the funeral.

Sadly, tragedy visited the Page home again soon. Daughter Lulu died on March 6, 1900 due to the same disease that had claimed her father just three months before.

A Mother Tries to Move On

Mother Lulu was left with three children to raise. She was forced to hold an estate sale to raise funds. According to newspaper articles, she purchased property in 1903 and began to build a home for her family.

But it was not to be. Lulu died on April 23, 1904 at the home of her sister. No cause of death was stated. She is buried with R.S. and Lulu at Mount Holly. Son Harry died a few years later on April 21, 1906 at age 17. His grave at Mount Holly is unmarked.

Ransom Jr. moved to California for his health not long after his brother’s death. He married Elise Raymond in June 1909. He passed away in January 1911 at 28. Elsie remarried to Phillip Estes in 1914. I don’t know where Ransom is buried.

The only member of the family left was Opal. She married Mack Steel in 1914 but she filed for divorce in 1917 after Mack was arrested for embezzlement. Another woman had also moved into their home while Opal was gone on a trip.

Like her father and sister, Opal died of tuberculosis on Aug. 24, 1918. She was 22. Her death certificate says she is buried at Mount Holly but I did not get a photograph of her grave. Her death brought a painful end to the Page family.

There are more stories from Mount Holly Cemetery. Stay tuned for Part III.

Do you remember the old TV game show “Beat the Clock”? That’s what I was doing when I visited Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock, Ark.

After visiting three different cemeteries and having a late lunch in Helena, we had a two-hour drive to Little Rock. That didn’t leave me much time to visit Mount Holly Cemetery. But when you see a sign like this, you can’t NOT visit. Right?

Sarah wanted to visit the Clinton Presidential Library (something I would have liked to have done as well but cemeteries come first) so she let me drive her car to nearby Mount Holly after I dropped her off. After looking online, I realized I had about only an hour to explore before they locked the gates. Thus the game of “Beat the Clock” began.

According to Mount Holly’s web site:

Mount Holly has been referred to as the “Westminster of Arkansas” because of the number of famous Arkansans buried here. Arkansas governors, state Supreme Court Justices, United States senators, Confederate generals, mayors, and Pulitzer Prize winners share Mount Holly with slaves, businessmen, farmers, artists, children, doctors, church leaders, and suffragettes.

On February 23, 1843, prominent Little Rock businessmen Roswell Beebe and Chester Ashley deeded four blocks to the young city of Little Rock for use as a cemetery. Before then, the dead were buried in private family cemeteries or in a small cemetery where the Federal Building now stands on Capitol Avenue and Gaines Street.

Mount Holly is not a large cemetery but it is chock full of interesting graves and is beautifully maintained. Find a Grave lists about 5,100 memorials. There are likely several unmarked that are not recorded. The cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places and is operated by the Mount Holly Cemetery Association.

Death of a Cherkokee Chief’s Wife

That “small cemetery” mentioned earlier was where the first person I want to talk about was buried first. She was later moved to Mount Holly. Not only is Elizabeth “Quatie” Brown Ross historically important, she and her husband have ties to Georgia.

Quatie, an anglicized version of her Cherokee name, was the first wife of Cherokee Chief John Ross. There’s much more written about John Ross than Quatie but here’s what we know. Born 1791 in the Old Cherokee Nation in modern-day Georgia to Thomas Brown and Elizabeth Martin Brown, Quatie was a widow when she wed Ross in 1813. She had one daughter from her previous marriage. She and Ross had five children over the course of their marriage, the sixth being stillborn.

Born in 1790 to a Scottish father and a Cherokee mother in Alabama’s Cherokee territory, Ross’ Cherokee name means Mysterious Little White Bird. I have seen so many versions of what that word is in Cherokee, I’m not going to list them all. Ross was raised to identify as Cherokee, while also learning about colonial British society. He was bilingual and bi-cultural. His formal schooling took place at institutions that served other mixed-race Cherokee.

By 1810, John Ross was acting as an Indian agent for the Cherokee people on behalf of the United States.  Soon after, Ross served as a military officer in the War of 1812 then the Creek War in 1813, under Andrew Jackson.

According to Quatie’s bio on Find a Grave, the Ross family owned one of the richest farms in North Georgia, some 200 acres, and other businesses. They were largely assimilated and owned a number of slaves.

In 1828, Ross became principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, headquartered at New Echota, Ga., under a constitution he helped draft. His defense of Cherokee freedom and property used every means short of war. As a result, he was imprisoned for a time and the Ross home was confiscated. His petitions to now-President Andrew Jackson fell on deaf ears, and in May 1830 the Indian Removal Act forced the tribes to give up their traditional lands for an unknown western home.

John Ross, Quatie, and their children were among the last Trail of Tears group of about 228 Cherokees to leave Georgia, traveling on the steamship Victoria. Legend has it that Quatie gave up her blanket to a sick child. She died of pneumonia shortly before they arrived in Arkansas on Feb. 1, 1839. Quatie was about 47 years old at the time.

Quatie’s grave at Mount Holly is marked with her original stone and another erected in 1935 by Gen. George Izard Chapter of the United States Daughters of 1812.

John Ross married again in 1844 to Mary Bryan Stapler, a Quaker from Wilmington, Del. whose religious beliefs warred with slavery. She encouraged Ross to free their slaves, which he finally did in 1856. Mary died in July 1865 at age 39 and is buried in Wilmington & Brandywine Cemetery in Delaware. When John Ross died in August 1866 at age 75, he was originally buried with her. Later, he was moved to Ross Cemetery in Park Hill, Okla. Their two children are buried there, as are three of his children with Quatie.

The Brooks-Baxter War

One of the first plots I noticed when I drove into Mount Holly Cemetery was that of the Basham family. That’s reason enough to feature them but George Leftridge Basham took part in a little-known Arkansas skirmish that I only recently learned about.

Born in 1848 in Arkansas, George Leftridge Basham’s parents were Oliver Basham (I have seen it spelled Olinver in some places) and Martha Patrick Basham. Oliver served in the state legislature twice before being chosen by President Benjamin Pierce to act as registrar of the land office of the United States. He was reappointed by President James Buchanan, serving until 1860 when he became the treasurer of the State of Arkansas.

George Basham joined the Confederacy as a teen, becoming a “private in Captain McComb’s company of the regiment of which his father (a lieutenant colonel) was second in command”. He served in the Battles of Poison Spring and Marks’ Mill. Oliver Basham was killed in action on Sept. 23, 1864 at age 44 in Pilot Knob, Mo.

After the war, George graduated from St. John’s College in Little Rock in 1870. He studied law, eventually passing the bar in 1873. It was soon after that the 30-day Brooks-Baxter War took place in 1874.

The struggle had its roots in the ratification of the 1868 Arkansas Constitution, rewritten to allow Arkansas to rejoin the Union. The Reconstruction Acts required former Confederate states to accept the 14th Amendment (establishing civil rights for freedmen) and enact new constitutions providing suffrage to freedmen while temporarily disenfranchising former Confederates. Some conservatives and Democrats refused to participate in the writing of the constitution and ceased participation in government.

Minstrels and Brindle-Tails

The 1872 gubernatorial election resulted in a narrow victory for “Minstrel” Elisha Baxter over “Brindle-tail” Joseph Brooks in an election marked by fraud and intimidation. Brooks challenged the result, initially without success, but Baxter alienated much of his base by re-enfranchising former Confederates.

In 1874, Brooks was declared governor by a county judge who declared the election results to be fraudulent. As a result, the “war” ensued between April 15 and May 15 as Brooks took control of the government by force, but Baxter refused to resign. Each side was supported by its own militia and a number of bloody battles ensued between them. Finally, President Ulysses S. Grant intervened and supported Baxter, bringing the affair to an end. George Basham had supported Baxter and was a member of his militia.

Two Little Girls

On Oct. 1, 1879, George Basham married Julia Parma Beall. He continued rising up the ladder as an attorney and invested in real estate. Their first child, Pearl Read Basham, was born on July 22, 1880. She died on Nov. 7, 1886 at the age of six. Martha Parma Basham was born on Dec. 3, 1882 and died on Aug. 10, 1887. Both George and Julia were so ill themselves, they could not attend her funeral.

You might recognize the open style of the ovals from recent posts I’ve written. Both are “cradle” graves with decorative urns on at the foot. Doug Keister’s book “Forever Dixie” describes the monuments for Pearl and Martha like this:

The Basham family plot features the two little Basham girls dressed in the clothing they would have worn at the time.  The sculptures were carved in Italy for the local monument company owned by William L. Funston. When the sculptures arrived, the family wasn’t pleased with the likeness and had them sent back to Italy for a better rendering. 

I didn’t know when I was visiting in May 2019 that both of these monuments and the statue to the left of it were vandalized in 2016. Apparently repairs were made to put them back in good condition.

George and Julia’s son, George Leftridge Basham, was born on July 27, 1887. That’s only two weeks before Martha died. It had to have been such a difficult time for this family. Welcoming a new baby son, mourning the loss of yet another daughter…

Julia died after having a stroke in 1911 at the age of 54. George, by then a judge, died in 1916 at age 66. Leftridge married twice, dying in 1929 at age 42 from a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Hot Springs, Ark.

Please join me next time for more stories from Little Rock’s Mount Holly Cemetery.