Biography of Robert Gardner, Independence Co, AR

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SOURCE: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas. 
Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889.
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page 667

Robert Gardner. Independence County, Ark., has won an enviable reputation as a
prosperous farming country, and this reputation has been acquired through the
enterprise and energy of such agriculturists as Mr. Gardner. He is now residing
one mile southeast of Elmo. He was born in Gibson County, Ind., on the 3d of
October, 1843. He received an excellent common school education in his native
county, but in 1873 emigrated to Arkansas and located in Independence County,
where he continued farming, having learned the details of this work in his
youth of his father, who was a successful agriculturist. Off and on, for the
first ten years of his residence here, he rented land of W. D. Hodges. Mrs.
Mary L. Bennard became his wife in February, 1874. She was born in Arkansas,
and died on the 18th of January, 1882, being buried in the Kirk family
cemetery. She left four children: John and Sallie (twins), who were born on the
4th of July, 1873; Mary, born August 22, 1879, and Edna, born October 29, 1881.
Mr. Gardner's second union was to Mrs. Minerva Scanlan, a native of Arkansas,
their union being consummated January 6, 1882. He has always been a warm friend
of education, and has kept his two eldest children in school for the past eight
years, their attendance being ten months out of the year. He is one of the
trustees of the school, and prides himself upon the fact that their school is
one of the best in the county, and that none but the best teachers are
employed, the salaries they offer being sufficiently large to command only the
best educators. While in Indiana he was a member of the Masonic order, and
belonged to Gibson Lodge No. 420, of Hazleton. His parents, John and Mary
(Nixon) Gardner, were born in Indiana.