Obituary of Governor Thomas S. Drew, Clark Co, Ar

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Submitted by: Paul V. Isbell
Date: 1 May 2011
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Drew, Thomas Stevenson- Born: Aug. 26,1802 Died: Jan. 1879 Lipan, Hood Co. ,
Texas-Arkansas Governor.  Moving from Tennessee to Louisiana in childhood and
then to Arkansas as a teenager, Drew worked in his early adulthood as a school
teacher and an itinerant salesman.  His political career began with his
appointment as Clerk of Clark County in 1823, followed within a few months by
his becoming Justice of the Peace.  When Drew married Cinderella Bettis in 1827,
her father gave the couple eight hundred acres of land, which Drew spent the
next several years developing successfully.  He continued his involvement in
politics, even while he was farming and speculating in the railroad industry.
He was a delegate to Arkansas's Constitutional Convention in 1836 and was
elected Governor in 1844.  Arkansas's first governor to be elected by a
plurality, Drew had run as a Democrat, having been selected by party leaders to
help unite factions.  He received forty-seven percent of the vote in a close
three-way race.  Four years later, running with no opposition, Drew was
reelected with 15,962 out of 16,455 votes.  Near the beginning of his second
term, however, personal financial problems led him to resign.  He died in
poverty while living with his daughter in Lipan, Texas, where he was originally
buried in the Old Baptist Cemetery.  In 1923 an act of the General Assembly of
Arkansas created a committee to go to Texas and exhume Drew's remains, bringing
them to be buried in Pocahontas, Arkansas. -Atlanta Daily Constitution, Georgia:
Obituary Feb. 11,1879 An Old Governor Dead-Little Rock, Ark. -Feb. 10-Thos. S.
Drew, elected Governor of Arkansas in 1844 and again in 1850, died recently in
Texas.

Extracted from:
Atlanta Constitution via Ancestry. com