Biography of Robert Y. Duncan - Craighead Co, AR

***********************************************************
Submitted by: Unknown < >
        Date: 26 Sep 1998
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
***********************************************************

SOURCE: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas.
Goodspeed Publishers, 1889.

page 330

Robert Y. Duncan, an active and progressive farmer, and proprietor of a
cotton-gin and gristmill, was born in Perry County, Ala., July 23,
1844. His father was Samuel A. Duncan, a native of South Carolina, who
located in Alabama when [p.330] about eighteen years of age. He was a
planter until thirty-five years old, when he began contracting and
building railroad bridges and houses. In December, of 1880, he was
working on a dwelling in Birmingham, Ala., and fell from a scaffold,
living only three hours afterward. He was married to Mary Ann Roberts,
also a native of South Carolina, and they were the parents of fourteen
children. Nine of them are still living, but only Robert Y. is in
Arkansas. The mother is sixty-seven years of age, and still resides in
Alabama. Robert Y. was reared in his native State, and coming to
Arkansas with some friends when twenty-four years of age, arrived at
Jonesboro November 17, 1868. In the spring, he rented a farm and worked
it for one year. In August, 1869, he was married to Matilda R. Lynch,
daughter of Aden and Susan Lynch. In the fall of 1871 he bought eighty
acres of his present farm and built his home. He subsequently bought
forty acres of adjoining land, making a farm of 120 acres, forty of
which are cultivated. In 1879 he built a good cotton-gin, and in 1886
opened a grist-mill in connection, and these have proved successful. To
Mr. and Mrs. Duncan have been born nine children: Ruby A. J.
(deceased), Samuel A., John J., Thomas M., Essie B., Effie Y., Robert
M., Taylor A. and Rufus Elbert. Mr. Duncan is a member of the Masonic
fraternity, Jonesboro Lodge No. 129, and has been president of Pine
View Wheel No. 881. since its organization in 1886. He was in Company
A, Fifty-third Regiment, Twenty-fourth Alabama Battalion, and during
his eighteen months' service was mostly in Alabama, Georgia and
Tennessee. He and his wife, oldest daughter and two oldest sons are
active members of the New Salem Methodist Episcopal Church.