D. Walter Bass, Calhoun County, AR

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SOURCE: Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889.
Contributed by Carol Smith.
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Calhoun County, Arkansas - from Goodspeed's History of Arkansas

D. Walter Bass, a prominent educator of Calhoun County, was born at Chambersville. In 1854, the youngest child born to
the union of Dr. Bass and Miss Eliza F. Porter, a native of Georgia. His father was a self-made man; he was born in North
Carolina, and left home in his youth, and engaged as clerk. In the meantime attending school a few months. He was married in
Georgia, about 1835, and resided in Harris County, that State, for a time, engaged in merchandising; then he went to Chambers
County, Georgia, in 1839, where he also engaged in mercantile pursuits. He resided at this place until 1847, when he came to
Arkansas, settling in Dallas County, in what is now Moro Township, Calhoun County. Here he started a store, the first in the
present limits of Calhoun County. The place was soon given the name of Chambersville, from the fact of the people coming
from Chambers County, Alabama. Mr. Bass was soon appointed postmaster of the first post office established in this county.
Here he lived, doing a good trade for that time, and accumulated quite a nice property. He died in 1853, six months before the
birth our subject. The mother died in 1871. Of this family there are now nine children living, and all live in Calhoun County,
except the eldest child, Louisa Jane, who lives in Camden. The two who died were twins, and died in Georgia in infancy. The
property of this estate was lost from mismanagement, on the part of the administrator, and our subject was reared on his
mother's farm. He attended the common schools until the outbreak of the war, when the schools were all closed, and his
educational advantage during the continuance of the war, were consequently extremely limited. After his mother's death in
1871, Mr. Bass went to Camden and engaged as clerk. He remained there two years and then came to Chambersville and
attended school for one year, and in 1874 taught his first school. In 1875 he re-engaged as a clerk for the first part of the year,
then came back and attended school for awhile, and then taught school in the same settlement that he had taught before. On
account of bad health, the next year he was compelled to rest. In 1876 he taught his first free school, and then made his home
with Mr. Wade, for whom he worked nine months of the year, teaching and remaining three months. He remained here for
three years, and since then has been teaching regularly in this, Dallas or Ouachita Counties. At present he owns three farms,
consisting of 366 acres, which he has purchased from time to time, all in this county, except eighty acres in Dallas County. He
has eighty acres under cultivation, and the balance of the land is covered with good timber. Mr. Bass is an enterprising and
progressive young man, and is doing well at his vocation.