Anyhow, it occurred to me I'd not looked up any historical information on Booneville, Arkansas (Logan County) so I went to my trusted source for such things, Archive.org . If you don't know about this amazing website you should familiarise yourself with it. I've found endless biographical details of ancestors in Virginia and elsewhere. I've found great historical texts on homemaking. When last month's issue of Threads magazine recommended a couple of books on pattern making, I found one of them on Archive.org and downloaded it - completely free - instead of paying anywhere from $24-104, the prices I found elsewhere on the internet. So, when this website asked for money, like I do with Wikipedia, I paid up. It's a valuable resource I'd like to see continued.
Sure enough there was a book online called Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas. I didn't find any family names listed there, but then I've only had a brief scan of the relevant chapter. I was very excited to read that the Logan County Courthouse had burned down. This is something my Grandmother mentioned a number of times, laughing that no one knew when she was born so she could tell anyone she was any old age at all! She didn't take into account that the Census records of 1900 would have her pegged down.
However, the story in the book about the courthouse burning reports that it happened in 1874! She wasn't born until 1898. Then again, the book was published in 1891, so perhaps it burned again since publication? And now I'm going to go back and see if her family was even in Arkansas yet at the time of publication. Maybe I should look for a book on Tennessee...
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