Misc. Ark. Newspaper Articles

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From the front page of the NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Friday January 27, 1899

Little Rock, Ark., Jan. 26. - Dr. H. C. Dunavant, President of the State Board of Health 
in speaking of the smallpox situation today, told of a terrible state of affairs at Salem, 
in Fulton County.

Dr. Dunavant has just returned from that place where he made a thorough 
investigation.  He says that there have been at least 400 cases of smallpox in the locality 
within the last two months and that a number of deaths have occurred.  He found 
people walking about the streets of the town, broken out with the disease, pockmarked 
and pitted, and others falling ill every day.

The local physicians contended that the disease was not smallpox, and that little effort 
had been made to check it's ravages.  As a result the disease has become scattered along 
the line of the Memphis and Fort Scott and Cotton Belt Railroads and many 
neighboring towns are now infected.

The disease was first brought to Fulton County about two months ago by a returned 
soldier.
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Little Rock Gazzette,
April 16, 1841
"The steamboat Odessa arrived at Little Rock with 170 passangers, 130 of
whom were emigrants from Tennessee and Georgia. All were expecting to settle
in Arkansas. The arrival of so large a party of emigrants was something of an
event, although there was nothing new about the arrival of smaller groups of
prospective settlers. In the years from1836 to 1840, the population of
Arkansas had just about doubled, principally by emigration. But by 1841, as a
result of the depression, there were signs of slack in the movement, to such
a degree that the state government had taken steps designed to stimulate the
inflow of population. There were, by 1841, many thousand acres of land which
had reverted to the state for non-payment of taxes, and these lands, in lots
of 160 acres, the state was now offering as ' a donation merely for the
asking.,' to such emigrants as were unable to buy land of the federal
government."
Thanks to Ray Rogers & Mary Turney for this!
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