Hillbilly Credit Ratings: The 1910 Credit Guide for Northwest Arkansas Businesses

A couple of years ago as I spent some time in Fayetteville, I regularly visited local stores selling used books.  I learned that the best (i.e.,read-worthy or resalable) used books could be bought at the Fayetteville library store. Also, I noted the Goodwill thrift store on College Avenue often put out some desirable books, but other Goodwill stores around Fayetteville seldom had books I wanted (perhaps they had all been taken before I got there). The worst thrift stores for used books were the area Salvation Army stores. At one time, these stores had filled many shelves with books, but apparently they had decided to quit doing so.

I mention the various thrift stores selling used books, and my low regard for the book stock of the Salvation Army stores, to make this point: never give up on stores selling used books. This lesson was made clear one day when I was checking local thrift stores for books, but finding few of interest. Discouraged, I had decided to skip the Fayetteville Salvation Army store, but at the last minute pulled into its parking lot and dashed in for a quick look. There, tucked away on a bottom shelf, below several shelves full of worthless hard-back novels, I found the best book I have ever bought at a thrift store.

The book’s title was not very enticing: Credit Guide: “The Red Book” (second edition). And the large format book (8” by 11”, three inches thick) was in poor shape: its pages had pulled away from the binding and its cover was dirty. Despite its shortcomings, the book was an exciting find because it is rare (it may be the only copy in existence) and it contains otherwise unavailable information of genealogical interest.

This book, published in 1910 by the Inter-State Credit Men’s Association in Kansas City, contains the credit ratings of people living in Benton, Washington, Madison, Franklin, Crawford, and Pope Counties of Arkansas, plus a few other scattered locations. Altogether, the 900-page book has about 54,000 listings,each with a person’s name and credit rating(s), and most have information about the person’s occupation and where he or she lived.

The Inter-State Credit Men’s Association and its Credit Guide: “The Red Book”

The Credit Guide: “The Red Book was product of the growing effort in 1910 to help merchants determine who could or could not be trusted with credit. Its publisher, the Inter-State Credit Men’s Association (I-SCMS), was one of many “Credit Men’s Associations” that had been created throughout the United States, especially in large cities. The local associations had banded together in 1896 to form the National Association of Credit Men (NACM), which continued to grow in size, importance, and influence during the decades that followed. [1]  

Until 1920, when the NACM created a national credit clearinghouse, credit information was assembled mainly local associations for local markets. A local Credit Men’s Association collected feedback about the payment records of people to whom its members (merchants and other businessmen) had extended credit. This feedback was assembled and published in books such as the one I found. 

The preface to my copy of Credit Guide: “The Red Book” explained that the information in the book was not dependent, as were previous efforts at credit ratings, on the “opinions of bankers, attorneys and others.” This type of credit rating, it observed, had been “vague, uncertain and indefinite.”  Instead, according to the preface:  

In placing this work in the hands of our subscribers, we wish to emphasize the fact that the ratings contained herein are purely the expressions of business men, based upon their experiences with the parties rated. We believe that this is the true plan of establishing credit. It is information gained by actual experience, as distinguished from mere opinion formed by observation. We have great confidence that its merits among businessmen will soon be universally recognized.

…

We believe therefore, we are warranted in the assertion that our ratings are more nearly accurate than those attained from the ordinary source, and as the value of our plan gains increased recognition, our ratings will be correspondingly more correct. We, therefore, wish to emphasize the importance of mutuality in effort, between our subscribers and the Agency, to the end that each may profit by the other’s assistance.

I assume that Credit Men’s Associations in other major cities and regions were using the same methods to produce similar books for their subscribers. However, such books are difficult to locate.  A Google search finds few references to similar credit guides, and Google Books has no digital copies of such books. Also, early credit rating information is not available through Ancestry.com, indicating that it does not have access to early copies of credit guides.

Probably the main reason why so few old credit guides have survived is that they were not general circulation books: they could not be purchased by the general public and they were not included in library collections. In fact, these books were not sold to anyone. They were instead loaned to subscribers for a specified period.

The limitations on the use of the 1910 Credit Guide I bought were specified in a form pasted on the back of the front cloth board:

This volume of “The RED BOOK’ Credit Guide is not sold but is loaned to ________ Subscriber for ______ from _______ 1910 as per specific agreement of contract, and if found in the hands of those not entitled to use it will be taken possession of by the Inter-State Credit Men’s Association and all rights under conditions of contract will be annulled.

In my copy of the book, the blanks are filled in showing Strode – Long Mer Co was the subscriber for 20 months from Dec 19 1910.  This book was “No. 1351.” 

The “Strode-Long Mer Co” was a general merchandise store located in Bentonville. Its owners were Claude Henry Strode (Oct. 18, 1879 – Oct. 10, 1958) and H. B. Long, about whom I found little information. Strode left the mercantile business in the middle of the 1910s and had a long career managing vinegar plants (mostly for the Ozark Cider and Vinegar Co.) in several cities, both in Arkansas and other states. 

Likely, this book should have been either destroyed or returned to the I-SMCA after August 19, 1912, when the period of the loan expired.  Fortunately, it was neither returned or destroyed, but instead was stored away for a hundred years until someone decided to get rid of it by donating it to the Salvation Army. 

The Credit Information

As the Inter-State Credit Men’s Association explained in the preface, the Credit Guide contained credit evaluations of people by merchants who had extended them credit. Some of the listings have only one rating, others have several.  The ratings are on two scales and are abbreviated as follows:

KIND OF PAY:

P.  Prompt Pay

F.  Fair Pay

S.  Slow Pay

J.  Considered honest but unfortunate circumstances prevented paying me

X.  Would Request Cash

KIND OF CREDIT:

A.  Over $1,000.

B.  300 to 500

C.  100 to 300

D.  50 to 100

K.  20 to 50

L.  10 to 25

P.  5 to 10

V. 1 to 5

For illustrate the use of the scales, here are three actual listings and their meanings

Branham G W farmer Ozark … FP FV 

Mr. Branham had ratings from two businesses that had extended him credit. One reported “Fair Pay” for credit given him of $5 to $10; another reported “Fair Pay” for credit of $1 to $5. Apparently “Fair Pay” was worse than “Prompt Pay,” but better than the other categories.  

Branshetter M. S. laborer Midland ….2X

Mr. Branshetter also had two ratings, both of them bad. Apparently, he did not pay off in an acceptable way the credit extended to him by two businesses.

Branson Levi miner Hartford …. SV X

Mr. Branson had two rating. One rating indicated that he was slow in paying off the $1 to 5 credit extended to him by one business; another business reported that he did not acceptably pay off the credit given him.

Where Your Ancestors Credit Worthy or Deadbeats?

The beauty of the Credit Guide: “The Red Book” is that it provides information not available elsewhere about the credit worthiness of about 54,000 people (mostly men) living in Northwest Arkansas in 1910. If you had ancestors living in the six covered counties during this period, you might be able to learn something new about them from this book.

For example, in 1910, I had ancestors living in Madison County (Brannon and Couch families) and in Franklin County (Durning and Harris families). So, I can use the book to find out if they received credit and, if they did, how their use of credit was rated.

Apparently, my Couch and Harris family ancestors did not use credit during the time the 1910 credit ratings were assembled. They do not show up in the book. 

Among 19 listings of Brannons, one is located in Health, where, in 1910, my grandmother – ten years old -- was living with her parents Robert C. and Sibbie Shackelford Brannon. Likely, Robert is included in a listing for “Brannon & Son” who were merchants living in Health.  This listing had one rating:  X.  Brannon & Son had not adequately paid off credit one business had extended to them.

While no listing can be found for a “Durning,” there are two listings for “During.” One of them is obviously a listing for John Lewis Durning (1849 – 1916) a farmer living in Cass. He had two credit ratings, SP and SV. These ratings document that he was slow repaying credit of $5 to $10 to one business and slow repaying $1 to $5 to another business. 

Another “During” is listed:  J. Z. During, a farmer living in Ozark. He was probably a relative, but I am not sure who this person was. I have no record of a Durning with those initials. However, many Durnings moved to Ozark in the early part of the 20^th Century; most were the children of George Durning (1873 – 1912), son of John Lewis Durning and Polly Welton. 

Whatever his relation to the clan of Cass Durnings, J. Z. “During” did not have a good credit history in 1910.  He had two ratings. One, SV, indicated that he was slow in paying off credit of $1 to $5. The other rating, X, documented his failure to adequately pay off credit extended by another business.

As the examples of my ancestors show, the Credit Guide can provide some interesting morsels of information about the history of families living in Northwest Arkansas.

Want to Check the Credit Ratings of Your Ancestors?

If you had ancestors living in Washington, Benton, Madison, Franklin, Crawford, Clark, or Pope Counties in 1910 and would like to know their credit ratings, use the comment section below to provide the last name(s) and their likely location and I will post the relevant information (if any is available) from the Credit Guide below.

Last Name:  Tisdale

Last name: Vyles

Last name: Drake

Lemming (or Lemmings, Lemming, Lemning) possibly in Pope County

Last name: Leming, Lenning, Lemming and Lemings.

Last name:  Glenn

Note: 

[1] For more in-depth information on the Credit Men’s Associations, see David Sellers Smith. The Elimination of the Unworthy: Credit Men and Small Retailers in Progressive Era Capitalism. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, (9) 2.  April 2010, 199-220 and Rowena Olegario. A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business, Harvard University Press, 2006.

Danielka's Fayetteville Adventures: Summer 2014

Circumstances have made it impossible for me to spend much time at my home in Birch Bay, WA during July and August, and that was especially disappointing because my Godson – the twelve-year-old dynamo from Podolsk (Moscow Oblast, Russia) – arrived on July 5 for his annual visit. The trip to Birch Bay, with his mother Oxana, was fifth time that Danielka Kalmykov (also known as Ka-Boy “the majestic and the powerful”) has traveled there to spend much of the summer.

Awesome Danielka

When it became clear that I would not be in Birch Bay most of time when Ka-Boy and his mother were there, Danielka’s Godmother and aunt, Natalia, proposed that he, his mother, and she travel to Arkansas and stay a week in Fayetteville, where I am presently required to be. I thought that was a great idea, and the trip was on. I flew from Fayetteville to Birch Bay, where my Subaru was sitting; then the four of us drove for 32 hours to get to Fayetteville.

 The four days on the road first took us through the noteworthy scenery of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.  We poked through these states, enjoying the views and vowing to return for longer stays at different cities and sites.  During this part of the trip, Natalia and Oxana, denizens of the back seat, kept pointing out buffaloes and elk; Danielka and I responded with proper skepticism and scorn. We, in turn, kindly pointed out the grazing unicorns and dragons along the way.

 

Natalia, Danielka, and Oxana at a Scenic Spot in Washington State

Danielka claimed the shotgun seat with some vehemence. He pointed out that during the past five years or so, he had been forced to sit in the back seat. Now that he has reached 12, and of course his soul is 14 years old, it was his turn to sit in the front. The main problem with him occupying the front passenger seat was that he was not heavy enough for the sensor to know that someone was sitting in the seat. With him sitting there, a light indicated that the seat was empty and the air bag was not on. To solve that problem, every time Danielka got into the car, he carried a heavy box of books with him. When we got the signal that the passenger air bag was on, his mother would take the box and put in the back of the car.

Danielka Enjoying the Ride

Midway in the trip, we left the mountains to travel the straight roads of South Dakota, Iowa, and Missouri. We sped through these states, and Danielka amused himself by reading the Hunger Games, which he enjoyed.

On one long stretch in South Dakota, Oxana – who recently got her driver’s license in Russia – volunteered to drive. She had never driven before in the U.S. She took the wheel for an hour or so. Not only was she very nervous, the rest of us had white knuckles waiting for the inevitable crash. She did fine, at least until she ran a red light at the exit. Fortunately, we all survived and celebrated by stuffing ourselves at a Denny’s.

 

Oxana Drives for First Time in the U.S.

After leaving on a Tuesday, we arrived in Fayetteville on Friday, early in the evening. The week that followed was full of fun and firsts for Danielka. They included:

A Sunday concert at the Fayetteville Public Library. It was a surprisingly good concert by a Barrett Baber, Fayetteville singer and songwriter, who also teaches sometimes at Fayetteville High School.  He writes some great songs and is a strong performer, and he has had some recent successes, including an appearance at the 2014 Grammys. His song “Arkansas (Get There from Here)” has been selected for use in advertisements promoting tourism in Arkansas. If you have not heard him, check him out at this site:  http://www.barrettbaber.com/  or on Facebook. He will be performing with the Razorback Band at halftime of the September 20^th football game.

Danielka, who has become a serious student of the guitar, sat on the front row to watch the fingering of Baber as he played his guitar.

Danielka closely watches Baber play the guitar

First peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Danielka had his first taste of this delicacy at the Eleven Restaurant at the Crystal Bridges Museum. His mother, Oxana, also had her first taste of grits, enjoying the Shrimp and Grits selection. I savored my 3,000^th meal of tasty brown beans and cornbread. Natalia was underwhelmed by the High South Chicken Salad. See the Eleven’s lunch menu here:  http://crystalbridges.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Lunch_feb.pdf

 

Oxana enjoys her first grits

First Grapette and Moon Pie.  Later the same day that he enjoyed the pb&j sandwich, Danielka got his first tastes of Grapette (purple, containing “no fruit juice”) and Moon Pies, bought at the store at the entrance of the Walmart “Museum” on the Bentonville square.  He found both to this liking.

 

Hard-to-Find Grapette

First B-B-Q Ribs.  When the four of us stuffed ourselves at Penguin Eds, Danielka ate his first BBQ ribs.  Eating ribs was a homage to his cousin, Denis, Natalia’s son. In late 1996, when Denis arrived in Athens (GA) from Ukraine as an 11 year, he took mightily to ribs, and for months that is all he wanted to eat whenever we went out to a restaurant. Ka-Boy ate the ribs with evident enthusiasm.

Danielka chomping BBQ Ribs

First Frosty Mug of A&W Root Beer. After losing (again) some bet with Danielka, I owed him a frosty mug of A&W root beer, which I had assured him had no equal it came to slaking thirst on hot days. Shortly after getting to Fayetteville, I was chagrined to learn that Fayetteville no longer has an A&W drive in or restaurant (though the Sonic drive ins are ubiquitous). Checking the internet, I found that the nearest A&W restaurants are in Fort Smith and Siloam Springs. So the last full day on the visit, we all drove to Siloam Springs to have a large frosted mug of root beer. It did not disappoint.

Danielka and Natalia Enjoy A&W Root Beer in a Frosty Mug

A trip to Tahlequah, OK to see the Cherokee capital. We took one afternoon to visit Tahlequah. I am not sure that I have ever visited this city, though I vaguely remember playing baseball there in the early ‘60s. I was surprised to find, after a 90 minute drive through Ozark foothills, an attractive downtown and several historic buildings. We devoured tasty pizza at Sam and Ella’s Chicken Palace, which is stuffed with chicken pictures, knick knacks and artifacts (for reviews of this restaurant, see http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g106178-d1172904-Reviews-Sam_Ella_s_Chicken_Palace-Tahlequah_Oklahoma.html )  Then we spent a couple of hours at the Cherokee Heritage Center, located a short drive from downtown Tahlequah. There, we learned a little about the history of the Cherokees, and Danielka scored a colorful tee shirt that will be unique among his friends in Podolsk. See http://www.cherokeeheritage.org/

Danielka watches a demonstration of  wool dying at the Cherokee Heritage Center

On the way to Tahlequah, we stopped by the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park for a quick history of the battle and a look at some of the old buildings. (See http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/prairiegrovebattlefield/events/ ) 

The park seems improved very time I go there. 

Natalia, Danielka, and Oxana at the Latta House in the Prairie Grove Battlefield Park

Daily dog walk. One of the pleasures of Danielka’s visit was a daily morning walk by or near Lake Fayetteville and its trails with my mother’s two dogs, Abby and Peppy (aka Pepsi). Danielka does not have a dog, and has not spent much time with them. He managed to make the dogs his friends through a liberal dispensation of treats. 

He and his mother were impressed with the Lake and its trails.  See http://www.accessfayetteville.org/government/parks_and_recreation/documents/maps/Lake%20Fayetteville%20Trail%20website.pdf

Danielka gives Abby a treat

Unfortunately, the trips to Lake Fayetteville raised some concerns. On the first day, we spotted a truck near the trails that. we think, was following us to conduct secret surveillance. Every day we went to Lake Fayetteville, the truck was there. The truck, as shown below, apparently belongs to the notorious secret police of the Soviet Union, the KGB.

If the KGB was listening to our conversations, they learned that Danielka was engaged in a battle on Minecraft against a ruthless and evil player who had stolen some valuable weapons from him and was a threat to other players. Ka-Boy was enlisting other Minecraft players to stop the bad guy from further misdeeds. Also, they would have heard of the elaborate prank that Danielka was planning to play on his Birch Bay neighbor, A.J., who is near Danielka's age. The goal was to scare him as much as possible. Danielka planned this prank, in part, because A.J. had not responded to a letter Danielka had sent him when A.J. was at a French Camp. In addition, they would have gained valuable details about Claire, A.J.'s dog with whom Ka-Boy had been playing, and a smart Chihuahua who belongs to a friend of his dad in Podolsk. 

In all, it was a great week in Fayetteville that went by quickly.  Natalia and I appreciated getting the opportunity to see the mind and energy of a robust and happy kid in action. Danielka and Oxana enjoyed their new experiences in the South. 

A Death in the Ozarks, March 1928

This picture is a deeply sad one. It shows my grandmother and grandfather burying a son, John Lewis Durning, who died at the age of 17 on March 22, 1928.  

The picture is taken at the Cass cemetery, which is located in the Boston Mountains of rural Franklin County. This cemetery is on the slope of a hill across the highway from an old sawmill. You can see it from the highway; its on the right as you head south and trade the twists and turns of a steep mountain for a flat road. An old Baptist Church used to be nearby -- I don't know if it is still there. Most recently, a Job Corps camp was located near it. And, of course, the mischievous Mulberry River is not too far away, nor is Turner Bend.

This location is usually a beautiful setting, framed by hills covered with thick stands of trees and bordered by a stream feeding into the Mulberry. But it was not beautiful on this day in 1928. The picture shows it was overcast; the hill in the background seems bleak. The nearby bare trees add to the desolation you can see in my grandmother's face and to the stoic grimness of my grandfather. The casket is leaning a bit because the grave was dug on sloping ground.

The casket looks to be a fancy one that had to be carried from Ozark or Fayetteville; neither was an easy trip. Likely the cost of such a nice casket was a burden on the family finances of a hill country farmer.

The grieving woman in the picture had a beautiful name, Lillie Samantha. She was born in Johnson County, Arkansas on January 31, 1889 or 1890 (her tombstone says 1889, her social security record says 1890).  Her parents were Gains Harris and Narcissa Belle [Bowman] Harris.

The Durning picture archives (a big shoe box) has one picture of my grandmother as a young woman.  She looks pretty and sophisticated in it; more like a city girl than a hill farmer's daughter. I have to wonder about the story of the hat.

Lillie Samantha [Harris] Durning was a Baptist during the first part of her life, as were the Durnings and lots of folks in the Ozarks. Many years ago, I found some papers in the Franklin County Court House showing that the Durning family -- which had arrived in Cass from Tennessee in the late 1840s -- had donated the land for the Baptist Church located near the cemetery where John Lewis was buried.

My grandmother later became a Jehovah's Witness. An aunt told me that she had left the Baptist Church soon after the death of John Lewis because of her feelings about the unfair loss of her young son. When I knew her -- I thought she was the nicest and kindest person I had ever known -- she was active as a Jehovah's Witness, and the church was an important part of her latter life.

The man in the picture, Elias Nathaniel Durning, was born on April 21, 1882, in Franklin County, Arkansas. He is wearing the hat and overalls of a farmer, plus a nice shirt. He was still wearing the hat, or one like it, and overalls during the 1950s when I visited him. Gruff but playful, my grandfather seemed to be a quiet man; he was not in good health for some time before his death.

How did Lillie Samantha Harris, born in Johnson County, meet Elias Nathaniel Durning of Cass? It likely came about because she moved with her parents to Franklin County sometime after the turn of the century. The 1900 census showed them living in Newton County; the 1910 showed her parents were living in Wallace Township of Franklin County; it also showed Lillie S., aged 20, was married to Elias N. and they had two small children and an infant. They married on November 25, 1905.

In 1920, Lillie and Elias Durning were still living in Cass and had seven children; the youngest was one year old. In 1930, they had five sons and five daughters living with them in Hogan Township of Franklin County (near Denning and Altus). Plus one son in the Cass cemetery. By then, the family had moved away from Cass to the southern part of the county.

Both of my grandparents lived into their 70s, with the later years of their life spent in Fayetteville. My grandfather died in February 1960.  My grandmother died in May 1964.  Both are buried in the Cass Cemetery where they left their son on a sad March day in 1928.

Greenland, Arkansas in the Late 1930s

In the late 1960s and 1970s, I drove through the small town of Greenland, on the southern edge of Fayetteville, just past the airport, dozens of times, barely noticing it.  Before the opening of Highway 540 connecting Fayetteville with I-40, the route to Little Rock was either on Highway 71 or the pig trail, and if you took Hwy 71, you were through Greenland before you even got serious about the trip.

The only time I remember stopping in Greenland was in the 8^th grade when the Hillcrest Junior High School B team played there in a basketball tournament.  I think the final score was something like 12 to 8.  I can recall nothing remarkable about the place.

Greenland comes to mind because I just read a small gem of a book by Fred Starr, titled Of these Hills and Us, published in 1958. In it, he tells the story of how he and his wife moved in 1935 from western Oklahoma to the  village of Greenland, population 140, to “wrestle with the other fellow’s youngsters” (p. 56).  He and his wife, Florence, whom he had married in 1928, had been teachers in Oklahoma, living for several years in a “teacherage ” there, which I take to be group housing provided for teachers (p.35).   

Starr begins the book with the story of a washday in Oklahoma when, because they had an infant son, Joe Fred (who later became mayor of Fayetteville), he -- helping out his wife -- had washed about three dozen diapers, and they were hanging them out to dry when a dark cloud suddenly blew in a dust storm. It came so quickly they were unable to get the diapers off the line before the wind gave the diapers a  “sandy red bath” that would make washing them next time twice as hard.

His wife was so distraught she told him, "If you’ll take me out of this country….I’ll live in a tent! I’ll live just anywhere and do anything to get out of his mess.”

Fred Starr in early 1940s

Starr took her up on her offer, and found a job teaching in Greenland, taking a pay cut from $140 a month to $50 a month, though the Greenland school board suggested he might get up to $60 a month.  He didn't know it at the time, but both he and the Ozarks have rarely been so lucky as the day he arrived. He spent much of the next 40 years telling the stories of the hills and the neighboring hill folks in a clear, sympathetic voice.  In doing so, he left us a colorful picture of life in the Arkansas Ozarks in the late '30s and early 40's before modern life changed things. Also, he gave us a vivid picture of life in Greenland at the time.

Starr's first encounter with his neighbors came on the day they moved there. As he tells the story, the house they rented in Greenland was on a hill so steep the moving truck could not drive up it. So the  mover left all of their furniture and belongings at the bottom of hill. 

Fred was hesitant to move everything up the hill that day, but his wife was afraid that it would rain, so she insisted they carry everything to the house before it got dark. One of the first things he grabbed was their most priceless possession, an antique grandfather clock that had been a gift from his grandmother. So, he wrapped his arms around the heavy clock, which was just about as big as him, and was struggling to carry it up the hill when he ran across one of “natives,” who stopped and seemed astounded to see him carrying the big clock.  After following him and watching him for awhile, the man went over and tapped Fred on the shoulder.  According to Starr:

…he inquired, gazing wonderingly at the huge timepiece, “Say, mister, why in tarnation don’t you carry a watch.

A few minutes later, this same man told Starr:

“…I hear tell you’re the new teacher. Well, iffen I’ze out shootin’ school professors I’d never in the world aim at the likes of you.”

Starr, his wife, and small boy quickly settled into the rhythm of their new surroundings. He joined the locals in the daily trek to the post office to check to see if the train arriving that morning had brought them any letters from the relatives they missed. He set up an account at the dilapidated general store that was chock full of goods that only the owner – a generous man to a fault – could find. He joined in the conversations of the men who squatted in front of the store on good days, and sat inside the store on bad days, about their favorite topic: the weather. And he became acquainted with his neighbors, a superstitious lot, who knew how to read the signs to determine such things as when crops should be planted or hogs neutered. 

Fred Starr in late 1950s

After a while at the first house on steep hill, his wife insisted that they move, fearing their son would fall out of the yard. Well, another problem probably disturbed her more. The neighbor across the road had a big bull and lots of heifers, and they made an impression on her son.  Starr described it like this:

...Our two-year old was beginning to imitate the bull's bellow. If by chance we had a caller, the off-spring made it a point sometime during the stay to get down on all-fours, approach the visitor with a low grumbling in his throat and say menacingly, "This old bull is goin' to git you." The child's mother considered this very embarrassing.

They moved to another house in the town, but could not stand the hard water there, and moved again, this time to a 20 acre farm, the Hively place, two miles south of Greenland off Highway 71 on the West Fork River.  It was during this move that they found local lore warned against three moves. Also, they learned from their neighbors never to move a broom or a cat to a new residence.  They didn't.

Much of the Of These Hills and Us is about life at the Hively place and another farm they moved to a couple of years later. They had had a daughter there (another son, Jon Larry, arrived before they moved to the farm; many of us remember him as the head of the Fayetteville Youth Center in the early '60s and as a local sports editor), raised a cow, kept some bees, neutered their pig, found water, killed hogs, listened on the party telephone line, went to church, and celebrated Christmas, all with the advice and help of the locals. In telling the stories of these events, Starr introduced the reader to some remarkable neighbors whose folkways enriched the Starr family in their work and life. 

Starr clearly loved his life in the Ozarks, though he had to scratch out a living teaching; delivering the Northwest Arkansas Times [NWAT] newspaper; writing a column for the NWAT, the Tulsa World, and other newspapers; and farming. His wife, born in the flat lands of western Oklahoma, was less enamored with the hills, but slowly came around. 

As Fred and Florence Starr gradually changed from "furriners" to Ozarkers, they learned to trust the wisdom of their Greenland neighbors, and they gained their own insights.  Talking of a “city cousin” who came to visit and was dismayed by their isolated lives, Starr write,

She knows only one way to be rich – by having a heap. But we have learned by living here in the hills – shut off from the world for a spell – that one can be contentedly rich by wanting little.”

Later he wrote, “poor folks have a poor way, rich folks have mean ones.”

From 1958 to 1971, five of Starr's books were published. Of these Hills and Us was the first and, I think, the best. It certainly was the most popular, published in three editions (1958, 1960, and 1971). The book is a small masterpiece of autobiography, character study, and folklore.  It is humorous, clearly heartfelt, and genuine -- in the best sense of the word. As with all of his books, Starr wrote Of These Hills and Us in unostentatious prose, with common language and colloquialisms, enhanced by droll humor.

Thanks to reading Starr's book, I will never think again of Greenland as just an extension of the Fayetteville urban area, a place with a red light that threatens to slow the trip to a destination to the south. 

Fred Starr: Ozark Folklorist, Writer, and Teacher

Probably most students who attended Fayetteville, Arkansas public schools in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s remember Fred Starr as “Mr. Starr,” the substitute teacher.  Mr. Starr and Mrs. Shepard were the two most frequent substitutes during my years at Hillcrest Junior High School, and others knew them as substitute teachers at Woodland Junior High and Fayetteville High School.  They were quite a contrast:  Mr. Starr was quiet and dignified, a bit aloof and very sober.  Mrs. Shepherd, as sweet as ice tea in August, overwhelmed you with the deepest Southern accent imaginable.  

When encountering Mr. Starr in the classroom,  I knew that he was a minor local celebrity who wrote a weekly column in the Northwest Arkansas Times (NWAT), but I did not fully realize or appreciate the extent of his accomplishments.  By the late 1950s, he had already had been writing a newspaper column for thirty-or-so years, had authored several books, had served two terms in the state legislature, had been principal of a Farmington school and superintendent of the Elkins school district, and was a well known and respected amateur folklorist.

NW Ark Times, 5-21-38

Saving the details of his life for a longer biographical article, the following is a brief sketch of his life.

John Fred Starr was born on September 11, 1896, in Waco, Georgia and spent his early years in nearby Flint Corner, a small settlement in Carroll County, located in Northeast Georgia near Alabama.  His father was William David Starr (1861-1950) and his mother was Alice Irene Murphy Starr (1863-1937).  His family moved around quite a bit as he observed in a column published in the NWAT on July 30, 1940:

When I was but a child my father contracted itching feet and there has always been much moving in the family. Why, I can remember we used to move so often when the chickens saw us coming to catch them they just walked up and crossed their legs.

The family moved to Oklahoma three times and returned to Georgia twice.  The final move was in 1911, and the Starr family stayed there until 1915, when it moved to Columbia Country, Arkansas, near Magnolia

In 1918, Fred Starr -- he dropped "John" from his name early on -- married Fannie Markham (who was about 16 years old at the time). They lived for awhile in Wyoming. Their daughter, Martha Loyce Starr, was born in February 1920. The couple were divorced in July 1928.  (In 1938, Martha married Fayetteville native, Charles Morrow Wilson, a nationally known author.)

Starr moved to Northwest Arkansas sometime in June, 1935 and made a living as a writer and an educator.  He married Florence Lillian Clark, and they made their home in Greenland until the early 1940s. They had three children, Jon Larry, Joe Fred, and girl who died in infancy (he wrote a moving "Letter to Heaven" soon after her death; it was published in his book Gifts from the Hills (pp. 22-25).

Fred Starr must have spent much of his time roaming the Ozarks collecting stories and wisdom from folks living in the mountains. The focus of his writing was on their life, speech, music, beliefs, customs, superstitions, and ways. The information in his columns was often cited by the famed Ozark folklorist Vance Randolph and others.

I am not sure when he started writing a newspaper column, but a search shows his columns were published in the NWAT in 1937 (I don't have access to earlier issues of the paper). According to Randolph, Starr's early columns appeared in the Fayetteville Democrat, which existed until the late 1920s His column was first called "Plain Tales of the Hills," then "Plain Tales of the Ozarks." In 1940, the name was changed to "Hillside Adventures." His columns were published not only in the NWAT, but also in the Tulsa World and other papers in Arkansas and Missouri. He continued writing a column, on and off, for the NWAT until his death in 1973.

I do not have information on Starr's educational background, but his work as an educator began in the 1940s.  Starr taught at Farmington's new school in the early '40s, and was principal of that school from 1944 to 1947. In the middle 1940s, he taught commercial law, English, business math, and accounting at the Fayetteville Business College. In 1948, he was appointed to be superintendent of the Elkin’s school district, a post he held for several years.

In 1954, Starr was elected to represent Northwest Arkansas in the state House of Representatives. He served two terms in that office.

From the later 1950s until his death in 1973, Starr wrote several books, including a couple of novels. Most were about, or set in, the Ozarks. In addition, he continued to write his column and other articles for periodicals, His published books, including shorter "booklets," were:

From an Ozark Hillside (compilation of columns), 1938

Plain Tales from the Ozarks (compilation of columns), 1940
Pebbles from the Ozarks, (complication of columns), 1942
Of These Hills and Us, 1958, 1960, 1971
Gifts from the Hills, 1960
Climb the Highest Mountain, 1964
To Keep at Promise, 1969
Of What Was, Nothing is Left, 1972
High Hills, Deep Hollows and Tale Tales of the Ozarks, 1968 (24 pp)

 As I mentioned at the beginning, Fred Starr was often a substitute teacher in the Fayetteville school system, and perhaps others, in the late 1950s and in the 1960s.  These years were also his most productive as a writer.

Starr died on November 24, 1973, at the age of 77. His obituary is below.

 A few days after his death, the NWAT published an editorial tribute to him that stated, in part, the following:

Fred Starr was a remarkable gentleman.  We shall miss his weekly column, Hillside Adventures, which graced this page so well, so long....

Fred Starr's roots were deep in the tradition of these Ozarks he loved and wrote about so delightfully.  True to the tradition of the hill country, he had a heap of sayings, and a heap more common sense.  These stood him in good stead as an accomplished teacher, author, and lecturer...

Although proficient at a great many callings, Fred Starr's real vocation was the Ozarks.  He liked nothing better than to spread the word about the richness and beauty of the simple life in these Ozark hills...

...[T]hese hills of ours are grander, more satisfying for those who know them, thanks to Fred Starr's having taken the time to help us understand them.  In that respect, he was a teacher of uncommon perception, a conservationist ahead of his time, and a folk artist of all too rare a quality.