Pope County, Arkansas

In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sold French Louisiana to the United States, including all of Arkansas. Today, that transaction is known as the Louisiana Purchase.

By 1804, Present Jefferson, with others, looked to the new lands as a refuge for Indian peoples on lands near American settlements, keeping American settlers and Indian societies separate.[4]

Soon after the Louisiana Purchase, much of the region encompassing future Pope and other counties was designated as lands for the removal of eastern native tribes. In about 1805, Cherokee living in southeast Missouri on the Mississippi River moved to the Arkansas River at the suggestion of Louisiana Territory Governor James Wilkinson.

In 1815, the US government established a Cherokee Reservation in the Arkansas district of the Missouri Territory and tried to convince the Cherokee to move there voluntarily. The reservation boundaries extended from north of the Arkansas River to the southern bank of the White River. The Cherokee who moved to this reservation became known as the "Old Settlers" or Western Cherokee.

A village on the Illinois Bayou served as the capitol of the Western Cherokees from 1813 to 1824.[5]

The Treaty of 1817 secured lands in Arkansas for the Western Cherokees north of the Arkansas River between Point Remove and Fort Smith. Most white settlers moved to new locations south of the river. By 1820, new Cherokee emigrants from the east had blended with the Old Settlers in a new "colony" with a string of Cherokee villages stretching for over 70 miles above Point Remove. About half of this distance was in the future Pope County.[6] An 1820 description by Territorial Governor James Miller called it a "lovely, rich part of the country."[7]

In 1818, the chief of the Arkansas Cherokees, Tol-on-tus-ky (Tolunskee or Tollontiskee), requested that the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions send a mission to Arkansas. The assignment was given to Cephas Washburn and his brother-in-law, Alfred Finney, who established a mission in 1820 on the west side of Illinois Bayou about four miles from the Arkansas River. The stream was navigable for keelboats about nine months of the year. The mission was named Dwight for the late Rev. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College and a corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.[8] The site was on a gentle rise covered with a growth of oak and pine at the foot of which issued a large spring of pure water. Above, below and opposite the site was plenty of excellent bottomland for cultivation. The mission was conveniently near Indian villages.[9] The mission eventually included more than 25 buildings, including seven log cabins, a dining hall, library, post office, lumber house, carpenter shop, saw mill, meat house, grist mill and barn.[10]

By the time Arkansas Territory was established in 1819, the western Cherokees represented at least 20 percent of the total population of the Territory, mostly centered along the Arkansas River and the future Pope County.

Pope County was established on November 2, 1829, ten years after the establishment of the Territory of Arkansas, with a temporary county seat to be at the home of John Bollinger.[11][12] A county seat selection commission elected in January 1830 chose the community of Scotia, home of Judge Andrew Scott, a neighbor of Bollinger, as the permanent county seat. With the formation of Johnson County in 1833, Scotia was but half a mile from the county line. The county seat was moved to Dwight and, then, in 1834, to Norristown, a growing town of the Arkansas River upstream and across the river from Dardanelle.[13]

Transportation into Arkansas' interior in the early years was mostly limited to river travel. While navigable, the Arkansas River was unpredictable, alternating between floods and droughts and infested with sandbars and snags. The winding Arkansas River passed through a vast swampy floodplain that covered much of eastern Arkansas, a breeding ground for malaria-bearing mosquitos. Settlers in those areas soon suffered from malarial fevers and other ailments and Arkansas gained a reputation as a sick and swampy land. Most pioneers avoided Arkansas and chose other destinations to settle in. Those who ventured further—into central and western parts of the territory, and Pope County—found good soils along the river valley and, in the mountains, healthy forests of pine, oaks, and hickory, with well-drained soils for farming in the valleys, a wealth of forage for grazing and an abundance of game animals. At the end of the territorial years, the bulk of the people of Pope County were plain-folk farmers, herders, and hunters.[14]

"The Arkansas Traveller. Designed by one of the natives and dedicated to Col. S. C. Faulkner." Lithograph after a painting by Edward Washburn (1830-1861), lithographed by Leopold Grozelier (1830-1865) and hand-colored, printed, and published by J. H. Bufford’s, Boston, 1859.[15]

After Arkansas became a state on June 15, 1836, the county seat was moved to Dover in 1841.[16] The first courthouse was a log structure.

There were 695 white families in Pope County in 1850. The total population, according to the census, was 4,710. Only 1,640 had been born in Arkansas. Most of the rest had been born in southern slave states. There were 11 who were foreign-born, including Dr. Thomas Russell. Sixty-two percent of the white population was under 15 years old. Twenty-three individuals were seventy or older; just two had made it to eighty. Over eighty percent of the population was supported by agriculture, mostly by self-sufficient farm families. Other occupations included carpentry, blacksmithing, tanning, lumbering, merchandising, and wagon-making. There were some lawyers, teachers, doctors, and preachers as well as millers, saddlers, shoemakers, cabinet-makers, county officials, and at least one tar kiln operator. There were only 100 slaveowners, and only ten owned ten or more slaves. Only three farmers had twenty or more slaves, enough to be considered "planters" in the slave culture of the south. There were no free blacks documented. There were thirteen sawmills—two steam-powered and the rest powered by water—, two tanneries, and a cotton factory producing 22,500 pounds of thread annually. Dr. Thomas Russell, for whom Russellville was named, owned 680 acres of land, four slaves, a store, and ten town lots. There were eleven one-teacher subscription schools with a total enrollment of 326 students. Churches totaled ten, according to the census, with 6 Methodist, 2 Baptist, 1 Cumberland Presbyterian, and 1 Old School Presbyterian. Principal causes of death, were, in order, croup, winter fever, cholera, hives, diarrhea, consumption and accidents. More than half of all deaths were infants under one year of age and only nine percent were over forty.[17]

In the late 1850s, Edward Payson Washburn took inspiration from Pope County scenes near the family's Norristown home for his most famous work, The Arkansas Traveller, the composition of which was derived from a story he heard from Colonel Sandford C. Faulkner. Supposedly occurring on the campaign trail in Arkansas in 1840, Colonel Faulkner's humorous story ends with a fiddle playing squatter being won over by the traveler (man on horse in image). Washburn's father was Cephas Washburn, founder of Dwight Mission.[18]

While the majority of the population of Pope County consisted of rural families, many were squatters on state or federal land. In 1851, about 76% of households did not own land and, in 1860, some 66% did not.[19]

In 1860, though its population had grown by 67.4% in a decade, Pope County was still sparsely settled. Along with the rest of Arkansas, it was on an economic frontier attracting relatively large numbers of new settlers, mostly from other southern states.[20] Even though Arkansas had been a state since 1836, the few communities were small with limited development. The population in the 1860 census included 6,905 whites. There were 978 slaves, mostly in the agricultural areas in the southern part of the county. Most families were in the southern lowlands of the county. A railroad being developed to be built through the county—the Little Rock & Fort Smith—was to include a depot in Dover.[21]

After South Carolina seceded in December 1860, an election was scheduled in Arkansas for February 1861 to vote on whether Arkansas would secede and if a secession convention would be called. In Pope County, prior to the election, secession was rejected four to one in a straw ballot.[22] In the statewide vote on February 18, secession was voted down.[23] The convention in March rejected an ordinance of secession, scheduled a vote of the people on secession for August, and adjourned subject to recall by the president of the convention.[24] After Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter and President Lincoln issued a call for support from the states, many advocated for recalling the convention, but others were opposed, such as the delegate from Pope County, William Stout, who wrote, "I believe it is the President's duty to put down rebellion. I have always thought so."[25]

Convention President David Walker issued a proclamation calling for the convention to reconvene on May 6 where, in the final vote,the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession was passed by a vote of 69 to 1.[26]

In 1861, much of Pope County was still a wilderness frontier. There was no railroad. Roads were little more than tracks and there were no bridges crossing streams. The population was sparse with most dependent on subsistence farming. Many were squatters not owning the land their cabins were on.[27]

During the war, what little civil authority there was collapsed throughout Arkansas. By 1863, in most of the state, travel was dangerous, farming hazardous, and county government inoperative.[28] Pope County records at Dover were moved to a cave for protection. Several skirmishes took place in the county, but there were no major engagements. On April 8, 1865, Dover, including the courthouse was burned.[29][30][31]

The civil war's primary principles—for the South, independence and preservation of slavery, and for the North, restoration of the Union—soon lost their relevance in thinly settled Pope County. As in much of the region, the already hard lives of much of the population were disrupted by wartime loyalties separating unionists from rebels. For many, the struggle turned into a no-holds-barred conflict of killing and driving out opponents in the interest of ensuring the survival of families and allies.[32][33] Of those who were able to, many fled to safer places.[34] Most able-bodied men were away from home on one side or the other. Many of those left behind—women, old men, and children—fell prey to bands of guerrillas aligned to the Confederacy—called bushwhackers by Union sympathizers—or the Union—called jayhawkers by southerners. Some belonged to neither side, attacking both sides and committing murder and arson and "pilfering and robbing of clothes, rustling cattle, emptying corn bins, taking whatever they wanted."[35] Others actively supported one side or the other, such as William Stout's cooperation with the federals,[36] though it probably led to his assassination in 1865.

With Federal troops stationed at Lewisburg—on the river south of present-day Morrilton—and Clarksville in 1864, foraging parties seeking supplies ranged into Pope County. Many families remaining in the county suffered incursions by the military and guerilla bands.[37]

Following the civil war, Pope County remained sparsely settled, with a census population in 1870 of only 503 more people than had been recorded before the war. Many of the people who had fled the upheaval and uncertainties of the war years never returned and, of course, many former residents had not survived the conflict. The Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad had been postponed by the conflict with the first rails not laid until 1869.[38]

During the military reconstruction period (1867-1868), when Arkansas was placed in the Fourth Military District, companies E and G of the Nineteenth Infantry,[39] were stationed in Pope County and headquartered at Dover for a year and a half.[40] In 1868, a militia law passed by the general assembly authorized the governor to enroll a state guard modeled, generally, after the U. S. Army.[41] Elements of this guard would be used four years later in Pope County.

Between 1865 and 1870, at least five county officials were assassinated:[42] Sheriff Archibald D. Napier and Deputy Sheriff Albert Parks on October 24, 1865, County Clerk William Stout on December 4, 1865, Sheriff W. Morris Williams on August 20, 1866, and Russellville Postmaster John L. Harkey on July 27, 1868. Napier and Williams both served as Captain of the Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (Union), Company I where Wallace H. Hickox, Stout's successor, was a lieutenant and John H. Williams, a successor to Parks and Morris Williams' brother, was a bugler.[43]

On March 1, 1870, the new Pope County jail in Dover was burned.[44] A man named Glover later claimed responsibility.[45]

A period of a little over seven months in 1872 and 1873 came to be known as the Pope County Militia War. However, there were no battles or skirmishes. There were no engagements between organized opponents of any kind. Instead, an unofficial militia,[46] headed by four county officers, exerted excessive and harsh control over the county, including threats to burn Dover, the county seat.[47][48] By the end of the period, three of the four officials were dead.

In 1872, an Independence Day celebration in Pope County, held at a camp ground at Center Valley, was attended by prominent ministers and county officials, most of whom were aligned with and appointed by the Radical Republican state administration. Many "patriotic" addresses were given "in which much was said in condemnation of 'rebels' in general and those of the county in particular." A day or so after the celebration, news spread over the country that the sheriff's chief deputy, John Herald Williams, after leaving the celebration, "had been seriously, if not fatally, wounded from the brush at his home near Scottsville."[49] Concerned neighbors were told by a physician that there were two holes in Williams' jacket, "one in the left sleeve, corresponding with an abrasion on his arm, the other is in front opposite a dent in his belt buckle and a bruise on his abdomen." There was also a hole in the crown of his hat. Mortally wounded just two months later, Williams admitted his alleged shooting in July was a ruse, part of a plot "arranged in Little Rock and perfected at the celebration on the 4th of July,"[50] a plot whose purpose was to maintain county officials' control of the county through the 1872 election.

On July 8, 1872, four men, William Hale, Nicholas J.(Jack) Hale, Joe Tucker, and Isham Liberty West, were arrested and held for a short time at the courthouse in Dover. That afternoon, the prisoners, under the guard of a sheriff's posse of twenty-four men that included Sheriff Elisha W. Dodson,[51][52] Deputy Sheriff John H. Williams, School Superintendent W. A. Stuart, and County Clerk Wallace H. Hickox,[53][54] were moved for the purported purpose of taking them to Dardanelle "for examination" where Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge William N. May resided. Upon reaching the old camping ground at Shiloh, the posse stopped, supposedly for the purposes of gathering forage for the horses and spending the night before proceeding to Dardanelle.[55] After a period of time, the posse remounted with the prisoners at the front and proceeded toward Russellville. Soon after, one of the posse remarked—"It is as dark as Egypt," and another replied "Egypt has no eyes,[56] immediately followed by shots from unseen parties[57][58] and the guard opened fire on the prisoners. William Hale[59] and Joe Tucker were hit. When Lib West[60] leaned hard to one side, his saddle shifted and he fell to the ground, scrambling to hide in the brush along the road. N. J. Hale ran his horse forward and made an escape.[61] During the melee, Wallace Hickox was thrown from his horse, suffering a severe injury to his arm.[62] Subsequently, Dodson, Williams, Stuart, and Hickox traveled to Little Rock seeking a declaration of martial law from Governor Hadley under the claim that they had been bushwhacked on the way to Dardanelle.[63] It was widely believed in Pope County that the affair that resulted in the killing of Tucker and Hale and the attempted murder of West and the elder Hale was part of a plot concocted at Little Rock to place the counties with strong anti-Clayton factions under martial law to control voter registration and the upcoming election and that the escape of two intended victims and the sworn statements of Jack Hale, Liberty West,[64] and the mortally wounded William Hale[65] likely prevented the plot from being carried out.[66]

A correspondent for the New York Tribune wrote from Russellville on August 10, 1872:

The gist of the Pope County affair is this: A sheriff and a clerk finding their terms of office about to expire, and nine-tenths of the people determined to put honest men in their places, connive to have martial law declared so that there will be no election, and they could hold over. They take a Deputy-Sheriff and a School Superintendent into the plot. The Deputy fires at his hat and coat one evening and says he has been bushwhacked. The Sheriff, Clerk, and School Superintendent raise a posse. They try to arrest some men against whom they have personal grudges, but not finding them at home, they take others whom they can conveniently lay hands on. They kill two of the prisoners, and immediately start for the State Capitol, saying that they have been bushwhacked, and that the prisoners were shot by their own friends. They raise a hue and cry that the county is in insurrection, and declare that nothing but martial law will put down the insurgents. I cannot believe that this stupid, barbarous piece of business was planned by anyone beside the ruffians who carried it out. Nevertheless the people of Pope County, with almost unanimity, are convinced that the plot was formed at Little Rock by the Ring that controls the State Government. They think a scheme was laid to try the effect of martial law on one county, and in the event of its success to put in force in several of the strong Democratic counties...[67]

Citizens organized into a protection organization they called a "police force."[68]

Arrest warrants were issued for ten men living in and near Dover and charged with an alleged attempt to assassinate Deputy Sheriff Williams. Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge William N. May permitted the men to select their own guard to surrender to. The accused men appeared before the court on August 1, 1872, with a guard of eighty-five men demanding an immediate trial. Told to return the next day, they returned with a guard of over one hundred persons, but the judge failed to make an appearance, later sending word to them that they were "honorably acquitted."[69]

On August 31, 1872, shortly after loading the county records into a wagon and sending them off toward Russellville,[70] Sheriff Dodson, County Clerk Hickox, and former deputy Williams left the courthouse in Dover riding south. A short distance later, Williams reined his horse to the right onto the sidewalk, riding toward the woodshop of William H. H. Pointer, with Dodson and Hickox following. As he got in front of the shop he threw out his hand firing a pistol shot toward the shop and another shot was fired from one of the other two riders. In response, two reports from a shotgun came from the shop. Hickox fell from his horse dead. Dodson and Williams galloped off, shooting back toward the town. Men who had pistols ran from where they had been sitting in front of town stores firing twenty-five to thirty shots. Williams' horse was hit in a foreleg,[71] Williams last seen on the road to Russellville with his horse trotting on three legs.[72][73]

After a request for help from Sheriff Dodson[74] that misrepresented what had transpired on August 31 in Dover, Governor O. A. Hadley issued orders on September 4 to Major General D. P. Upham to provide aid in Pope County "as is or may be necessary to execute the civil and criminal law of the state." The orders gave Upham discretionary power in the use of force and the power to call state guards and enrolled militia into service.[75] On September 6, General Upham with a contingent of eleven members of the state guards commanded by a Lt. Groves traveled to Pope County where Sheriff Dodson met them at their arrival at Perry Station with three companies of his militia.[76]

The Russellville Tribune newspaper office was burned on September 8.[77][78] Replacement printing equipment was obtained, with the weekly newspaper resuming publication with only a few issues having been missed.

On September 9th an attempt was made to arrest John H. Williams for attempting to kill Harry Poynter on August 31. Williams refused to be arrested and, outgunned, was shot and captured.[79][80] Mortally wounded, Williams made a confession that he had "begun the trouble".[81][82]

During this period, many Pope County families who were able to sought refuge elsewhere.[83] This included one of the wealthiest, Jacob L Shinn, who had taken refuge in Little Rock.[84] Sheriff Dodson's militia terrorized much of the southern part of the county,[85][86] preying on and plundering the property of Pope County citizens such as Kirkbride Potts,[87][88] John Bradley, and J. B. Wharton.[89] Merchants in Russellville were forced to provide supplies for Dodson's men, camped two miles from town, with payment only in orders on the county.[90] A small force of state guards under General Upham stood between Dodson's militia and the "crowd" in Dover."[91]

Dodson and Hickox next tried to get martial law declared under the premise that it was unsafe to do county business at the courthouse in Dover. Ordered to close the county clerk's office by Hickox, Deputy Clerk (Rev.) J. M. P. Hickerson instead kept it open.[92] A group of men commissioned by Governor Hadley to ascertain what steps could be taken to disband the militia and "more speedily restore peace and confidence" determined that issues had been "engendered and fostered by unscrupulous politicians."[93]

Election campaigns in 1872 found many Arkansas Democrats supporting Joseph Brooks, the Liberal Republican (Brindletail)[94] gubernatorial nominee against Republican Elisha Baxter. There were state-wide fraud and voting irregularities on both sides.[95][96] State election officials threw out the votes of four counties, with Baxter being declared the victor.[97][98] Pope County was one of twenty-nine counties where the vote was contested. Numerous citizens gave testimony and depositions about fraud and irregularities witnessed during voter registration and the election in Pope County perpetrated by Sheriff Elijah W. Dodson, County Clerk Wallace H. Hickox, Captain George W. Herriot, an election judge, John H. Martin, the president of the board of registration, Superintendent of Public Schools W. A. Stewart and others. Registration and voting were only done at two of the twelve Pope County townships with the "classes disenfranchised" provision of the 1868 Arkansas Constitution liberally applied.[99] During the November 5, 1872 election, members of Dodson's militia—having given up their "guns, but... retained their pistols"—were "around the polls" in Dover and Russellville all day. [100] Following the election most of the state guards called into service in September returned home.[101]

In early October, Sheriff Dodson resigned and his militia disbanded,[102] though he was on the ballot for the November 5, 1872 election, where he claimed victory[103] over his opponent, A. S. Fowler—late of the state guard and the sheriff appointed in Dodson's place after his resignation—and was commissioned by the governor.[104]

The contested election case for Pope County Sheriff between Elisha Dodson and A. S. Fowler was heard at the county courthouse in Dover on February 19, 1873, by Judge Brown, who determined he didn't have jurisdiction to decide the case. Following the hearing, during a physical altercation between Captain George Herriott of the state guards and John Hale, initiated by Hale, Herriot was shot and killed by an unidentified third party. Dodson and Fowler, along with others,[105] had departed for Perry Station where they were to catch a train for Little Rock early on the morning of February 20. As Dodson boarded the train, he was mortally wounded by someone shooting from below the platform.[106]

The killings of Herriott and Dodson and the state of affairs in Pope County were the subject of discussion and resolutions in both houses of the General Assembly on February 20, 1873, after it was learned that Dotson had been shot that morning.[107]

In the period between the end of the war and the end of Reconstruction, a number of assassinations and murders of public officials and others occurred in Pope County.

• October 1865—Sheriff Archibald Dodson Napier, the county's first sheriff following the war, and Deputy Sheriff Albert M. Parks were killed on a road east of Dover. [108][109] Some sources claim that George W. Newton was the assassin.[110]
• December 4, 1865—William Stout, Methodist minister, county clerk before the war,[111] Pope County delegate to the 1861 State Convention[112] and the 1864 Constitutional Convention, signer of the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession[113] and the first county clerk after the war, was murdered at his desk.[114][115] George W. Newton is also said by some sources to have been Stout's assassin.[116]
• August 20, 1866—Sheriff William Morris Williams—Napier's successor—was murdered at his home in Dover and Ray Gaine was killed at his Gum Log residence.[117][118]
• July 27, 1868—Russellville Postmaster John L. Harkey was murdered at his store.[119]
• July 4, 1872—alleged attempted assassination of Deputy Sheriff John Harold Williams, younger brother of William Morris Williams.[120][121][122][123]
• August 31, 1872—County Clerk Wallace H. Hickox was killed in Dover.[124][125] Late that afternoon, Justice of the Peace Allen Brown was accidentally shot as citizens prepared to defend against a feared raid.[126][127]
• September 9, 1872—Allen Drake was killed by a man named Glover, who Drake had shot in 1866. Glover, who bragged that he had burned the Dover jail, was subsequently killed by friends of Drake.[128] Glover was alleged to have assassinated Sheriff W. Morris Williams.[129]
• September 9, 1872—Former Deputy Sheriff John H. Williams was mortally wounded, dying the next day.[130]
• February 19, 1873—During an altercation, Captain George Rutherford Herriott of the state guards was fatally shot at the county courthouse by some unknown person.[131][132]
• February 20, 1873[133]—Sheriff Elisha W. Dodson was mortally wounded as he boarded a train at Perry Station, then the western terminus of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad.[134]

• Archibald D. Napier—Captain, Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (Union), Company I, enlistment November 21, 1863, date of rank (Captain) February 14, 1864, 1st lieutenant from organization; dismissed October 15, 1854.[135] Commissioned as a Captain of militia organized for Pope County, date of commission April 8, 1865.[136] Said to have been a jayhawker [137]
• William Morris Williams—Lieutenant Confederate army,[138] Captain, Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (Union), Company I, enlistment November 21, 1863, date of rank (Captain) February 1, 1865, Appointed from Private to 2d lieutenant; mustered out with regiment June 30, 1865 [139]
• Wallace H. Hickox—2d lieutenant, Fourth Regiment Arkansas cavalry volunteers, Company B, Appointed from quartermaster sergeant of 15th Illinois cavalry, date of rank April 11, 1864, mustered out at Little Rock, Arkansas, October 5, 1864.[140] Lieutenant, Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (Union), Company I, date of rank, February 1, 1865; mustered out with regiment June 30, 1865 [141]
• John H. Williams—Bugler, Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (Union), Company I, enlistment and date of rank, December 29, 1864; mustered out with regiment June 30, 1865 [142]
• William Stout—Captain David West's Unit, Lt. Colonel W. Gray's Arkansas Volunteers, 1846 to April 30, 1847 (War with Mexico), served in the home guard during the war,[143] civilian scout and guide for Union troops [144]
• Elisha W. Dodson—Captain, Third Arkansas Cavalry Regiment (Union), Company A, Date of rank, November 29, 1863; appointed from private to 1st lieutenant October 18, 1863; dismissed Feb. 13, 1864.[145] Alleged guerilla[146]
• George Washington Newton—a former confederate soldier, identified by some sources as the assassin of Sheriff Napier, Deputy Parks, and County Clerk Stout. Newton is said to have served in Capt. Thomas Linton's company, Scott's squadron, and Jackson's regiment, Shelby's division of Arkansas, where he was promoted to the rank of Major. However, in a 1930 widow's pension application in Texas, Nancy Newton records, "First was a member of Co. B 1st battalion Arkansas and then a member Co. G. Nichols Regiment Mo. Cavalry." No mention was made in the application of any officer rank and Nancy Newton was awarded a widow's pension for his service as Sergeant G. W. Newton.[147][148]

By June 1873, regular service on the Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad extended all the way through the county as far as Clarksville in Johnson County. County commerce that had previously made Dover the business center of the county moved to Russellville or Atkins.

After several attempts, the county seat was moved from Dover to Russellville in 1887. An act to move the county seat passed in the General Assembly in 1873[149] but was repealed during a special session of the General Assembly in 1874.[150] On March 19, 1887, an election was held on whether to move the county seat to Russellville or to Atkins. Russellville was selected by a margin of 128 votes out of 2,670 total votes cast.[151] The question on moving the county seat had also gone to the voters nearly a decade earlier on September 2, 1878, but the results were overturned in the courts.[152]

With the completion of the railroad through the county and the move of the county seat, some smaller communities such as Norristown [153] and Dover went into a period of decline or disappeared.

• Newton County (northwest)
• Searcy County (northeast)
• Van Buren County (northeast)
• Conway County (southeast)
• Yell County (south)
• Logan County (southwest)
• Johnson County (west)

• Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge (part)
• Ozark National Forest (part)
• East Fork Wilderness[155]

As of the 2020 United States census, there were 63,381 people, 22,579 households, and 14,881 families residing in the county.

As of the 2000 census,[163] there were 54,469 people, 20,701 households, and 15,008 families residing in the county. The population density was 67 inhabitants per square mile (26/km²). There were 22,851 housing units at an average density of 28 per square mile (11/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 93.73% White, 2.61% Black or African American, 0.68% Native American, 0.64% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.93% from other races, and 1.39% from two or more races. 2.06% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 20,701 households, out of which 34.30% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.60% were married couples living together, 10.20% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.50% were non-families. 23.00% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.10% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.00.

In the county, the population was spread out, with 25.50% under the age of 18, 11.60% from 18 to 24, 28.20% from 25 to 44, 21.90% from 45 to 64, and 12.70% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.40 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.10 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $32,069, and the median income for a family was $39,055. Males had a median income of $29,914 versus $19,307 for females. The per capita income for the county was $15,918. About 11.60% of families and 15.20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 18.80% of those under age 18 and 14.00% of those age 65 or over.

• Atkins
• Dover
• London
• Russellville (county seat)

• Hector
• Pottsville

• Appleton
• Oak Grove

• Augsburg
• Nogo