BEGINNING OF PART ONE IN THE JANUARY 1979 ISSUE.
Vol 8 pages 35 to 40.
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     The following article originally appeard in Installments in the OZARKS MOUNTAINEER from December, 1963 through July, 1965.  We are indebted to the editor of the OZARKS MOUNTAINEER for givng us permission to use this article and to Duane Huddleston for calling it to our attention and sending a complete copy.

     It was contributed to the OZARKS MOUNTAINEER by Dr. T.L. Ballenger, a Mountaineer staff member, who was a retired professor of history at Northeast Oklahoma State College at Tahlequah, Oklahoma.  He said that this account was written by Jehoida J. Sams in a pencil note book and, as far as is known, had never been published.  It was too long for all of it to be published but the following are excerpts.  It was printed, as far as posible, just as the author wrote it, about the year 1895.

     Jehoida J. Sams was a County Judge in Izard County in the years 1852-1854.  This article was the first information we had on Judge Sams and will be, I am sure, a welcome addition to Izard County, the Jeffery descendants history, and the history of related families.

     We disagree with some of the things Judge Sams wrote about members of the Jeffery family but, nevertheless, will let our members judge the material on its historical value.

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Doug Note : Jehoida's own writings begin.

     James Jeffery (1758-1844) moved from Tennessee to the section of the country called the New Madrid (MO).  He was living in the upper edge of it in 1812 at the time of the great earthquake of that period when the whole New Madrid country sunk several feet.

     He lived in a bottom called Tywopity, on the Mississippi about 15 miles above the Ohio river mouth.  He moved from there across the river into Illinois and stayed three years, thence to the Arkansas Territory, In the County of Lawrence, on Reeds Creek where he opened a farm and lived five or six years, he and his two sons, James Jr. and Jessee Jr.  After a time he moved to White River in Izard County and remained there til his death, In 1834, in the 86th year of his life.  (Lawrence County then was much larger than it is now.)

     Old Jessee Jeffery, my grandfather's brother, emigrated to Lawrence County in the year 1816 from Knox County, Tennessee.  He had a family of six children- three sons, James, Jerry and Jessee and his daughters were Cintha, Louisa and Hetty.  Old Jessee Jeffrey was a man that would make money and his brother James said it did not make any difference how he got it.

     At the time there was some counterfeiting going on here in the territory, so I have been told.  But Ole Jessee always kept others between him and the halter; but he always got his share of the proceeds.  He most generally kept some character in his reach to do his dirty work for him if necessary.  They were very expert at making their money them times.  I have seen a many of their dollars in my time and they were well made too.  They would wear some time before detected.  They would make a right smart chance of them and change them from one to another before taking a journey off.  On these journeys they would stop in and call for a glass of whiskey or brandy and hand out a counterfeit dollar and get back eighty-seven and a half cents in good money, then they would go to the next station.  They always made it convenient to call late in the evening or at night to get a "horn" or some other small article, always getting good money in change.  Sometimes they would be gone three or four months at a time.  When they got a sum to justify they would buy up a flat boat and go down to New Orleans and on the way down they would unavoidably stop and tie up just at night and change off some of their money and leave in the night.

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     Jerry Jeffrey, Jr., left about the year 1823 to the country called the Spanish country, now known as Texas.  It was supposed the Spaniards killed him for he was never heard of any more.  I saw one man and got very well acquainted with him that was captured by the Spaniards in those days.  This man was John Ware.  He lived on White River and married here.  He said the Spaniards kept him in chains confined in prison twenty-two years in the City of Mexico before he got away from them.  He was a relative of the Ware family now here in this country.  Louisa Jeffrey strolled off.  Hetty married a man by the name of Bagwell and has some grandchildren here in this country now.

     I will give you another portion of the history of Jessee Jeffrey, Sr., more particulary for the information of the relatives of his wherever they may be.

     I was just big enough to hear him tell about his voyage with his father and brothers across the ocean.  I heard him say he was nine years old when they came across in the year 1764.  When I was eight years old he wanted my mother to let him take me and raise me.  He said he would bind himself to do by me as he done for his own children.  He delighted in all kinds of fine stock except jacks.  He delighted in running rare horses and generally kept the fastest stock of the time.  He not only had fast horses but he had what he called fast judges, for he said there was more in fast judges than in fast horses.  He and I often ran horse races on the public road, with the disapproval of my mother.  Once I heard my mother tell Uncle Jess that the reason he wanted me to raise was, we was so much alike in disposition.  "If you had him," she would say, "he would get hung or get his neck broke for he is as full of meanness as you are."

     My mother was a very pious woman.  She belonged to the Methodist Church but was really a Cumberland Presbyterian in belief.  She attached herself to the Methodist church because her second husband, Reverend Thomas Culp, was a Methodist.  She said it looked too odd for her husband to belong to one church and her to another.

     She lived in the Methodist Church from 1830 until her death, which occurred in the year 1863 in her 66th year, here in the White River Valley in Izard county.  She lived and died in three miles of the first place she moved to when she moved from Lawrence county.

OLD JAMES JEFFREY

     I will give you a more full history of old James Jeffrey my grandfather, a brother to ole Jessee Jeffrey.  He was a man of very few words and seemed to be very solid sober man, rather selfish looking, but a man of good business.  When a boy I would be about his house a great deal.  I was very rude and cut up a right smart.  He would say, "Jehoida, I wish you would behave."  That was enough, right then and there you could see me getting.

     He was a Freewill Baptist as far back as I know, but some years before his death he joined the Presbyterians as there was no Baptist Church in that country then; but he always contended that the Baptists were right in belief.  The only time I ever heard of him having any trouble was with old Henderson who entered his land from him.

     And now I will speak more fully of my grandmother Jeffrey, old James Jeffrey's wife. Her maiden name was Jane Mason, who was born in Old Virginia, near Kingston.

     James Jeffrey and Jane Mason were married in Virginia near Alexandria.  She was in her 16th year of age.  Her parents were very much opposed to her marriage.  Her parents were very wealthy and she was well educated and they didn't want her to marry a man of no learning.  My grandmother was of Welsh descent; her father was from Wales, her mother was an American raised woman.

     My grandmother had a head of her own and she retained it as long as she lived.  When her and my grandfather were first married he did not know his letters.  She learned him to spell and then to read.  He would read in some old style with a long tune to the last of his reading, something like the old Iron side Baptist preachers used to do.  He read a right smart, but only in the Bible.  I have heard him say he would not read a newspaper; he said they lied too much for him.

     As I said before, my grandmother was well educated.  She studied medicine in her young days and became a great woman and children doctor.  I have known her to go 59 miles to see a sick woman in an early day here when there was no physician in the country.  She would go day or night.  She was 86 years and 6 months old when she died.

     Well, my dear readers, you may get tired of my poor scholarship buy if you do just rest and try it again for I am a man of no education and never tried to write a history before.  My friends and relatives have been, for the last 15 years, teasing me about writing the history of the first settlements of the White River Valley, since I was the only man living in this valley as early as 1818 among the Shawnee Indians on White River.  They owned the south side of the White River at the time.  I have danced a many a tune with them and eat soup around their kettle with one of their horn spoons.  If you were sociable with them you was alright but if you were somewhat distant they would have no use for you whatever.

     I was ten years old when my mother moved to White River, that was 63 years ago, that makes me come back 78 years.  My father and mother were married in Union County, Illinois, two miles and a half from Jonesborough in the year 1817.  They had only the one son, what a pity I was not a seventh son, for then I might have been, by common consent called Doctor, and have become great.  My mother was a very poor and living as she did far back in the backwoods she had neither the means nor the oportunity to give me much learning.  I was born on the sixth day of May, 1818, on Reeds Creek in Lawrence County, Arkansas in three miles of the mouth of the same. I will tell you about my first recollections  I don't remember my age at the time, but it was before I donned pantaloons, I was still wearing dresses.

I FALL INTO A TANNING VAT

     My stepfather and John Minikin, his partner, were running a tanyard together on Reed's Creek in Lawrence County, Arkansas territory.  One cold morning they went to the tanyard to work, as usual and I ask my mother if I could go with them.  She said I could not go, but after they had been gone for some time, I slipped off and followed them to the tanyard.  My stepfather saw me and kept a good lookout for me, and thought he was.  There were seven tanning vats, six in one place and one off to itself.  I had taken a good look at the six vats, and then I must look at the one by itself and while viewing this vat I fell in it.  It was about four feet deep in very strong ooze used for putting dry hides in to fix it ready to curry and dress.

     My stepfather soon missed me and went to the deep vat to look for me.  The vat had frozen over the night before and I had broke the ice when I fell in on it.  When I would strike the bottom of the vat I would give a kick and up I would come and then to the bottom I would go again.  My stepfather caught me by the dress tail and pulled me out.

     I can recollect my stepfather leading me up a slanting road, my coat tail flapping against my legs, to the house where my mother was.  I felt curious.  I did not know whether I was scalded or frozen.  After my mother got me thawed out, she gave me a reprimand, sure.  I can say I never fell in another tan vat and I have tanned many a side of leather since that day.
                                 (to be continued)

Doug Note: looks to be:

     After my stepfather and my mother married they moved across on the Shawnee side of White River.  I waried along, no schools.  I was about eleven years old.  I learned by pine fires until I could spell a little in two syllables but I will tell you how I learned my letters.  My grandmother wrote me the first nine letters of the alphabet on a smooth board and I learned them before I ever went to school.  The first day of school I learned the other fifteen.  I went about three weeks and the school broke up.  After that I would go sometimes two weeks at a time and sometimes maybe not more than one or two days at a time until I was in my sixteenth year.

     I now took it into my head this won't do, hardly any clothing, only buckskin pants and leather hunting shirt and often no other one under it.  I saw other boys of my playmates, whose parents were able to dress them when they went to gatherings.  I thought to myself, I will not stay here any longer, so I started out to see if I could get any work to do.  I had worked a little on odd days.  My mother always kept me engaged in carding and spinning, only when I could dodge her.

     I knew if I stayed with mother I would have neither money or clothes.  And I thought that would not do at all, for I began to think that maybe, in one or two years more, mother would let me spark the girls, as I had begun to twist the buck bushes, etc.

* * * * *

     His property was sold to the highest bidder and I was scarce of clothes.  I asked some of my friends to go on my note if I bought anything.  They agreed and promised to let me woek it out.  The horses and other things were sold first, at last the clothing was put up and one or two bids made on them, the last bid was five dollars and seventy five cents.  I then bid six dollars and got them.  I was as proud as a negro with a new shirt.  I was standing there over my bunch of clothes, looking as cunning as a Swamp fox watching a hen roost.  President Cleveland didn't feel any bigger when he first took his seat as President of the United States, then I did at that time.  There were three cloth coats, two new ones, and one that he had worn some but there was not a break in it, and several fine pants besides several fine shirts and other things and the most of them fit me.  I soon quit wearing my buckskin pants and hunting shirt, only at home or work.

     Them clothes lasted me about two years.  I went to hunting work and in three months had saved money enough at odd times to pay for my clothes.  I then wanted a horse, bridle, and saddle.  I soon found a young mare that I bought for forty dollars, with four years to pay it in, ten dollars each year.

     At this time I was in my seventeenth year and no education.  So myself, Miles Jeffrey and Mason Haggard all agreed to board ourselves out and go to school.  The school house where we went was where John Arnold now lives, one mile from Melbourne, Izard County Arkansas.  We started on the first day of August and went two months.  I had finished my education, had got so I could read and write a little.  That was my school house education.  The balance I got by "main strength and awkwardness."

     I bought me a supply of fine clothes and every day clothing and got back with fifty dollars in cash.  I then bought me a saddle for twenty-five dollars in trade.  I farmed a little, then made seven more flat boat trips to New Orleans.  I had a spell of the cholera and decided to quit flat boating.

     When we were married she had her clothes but no bed.  I hadn't any either, nothing only my clothes and a few dollars in money.  I had my mare, bridle and saddle and one cow and a calf, which got choked to death when it was three weeks old and last, but not least I had a straw bed tick.

     My uncle gave us two shoats for helping mark his hogs.  When we got our chattles together in a house the scratching commenced.  I thought a wife was all that I needed.  In about three weeks I began to look around and saw we had nothing to commence with and times were hard.  It was the year of the Arkansas Bank break.  I saw a good three year old horse sold under the hammer at a sheriff's sale for five dollars.

     I would work all day in the field and at night card wool for my wife to spin and weave into cloth.  At first we had no loom and she had to go to the neighbors to weave.  But I soon got tired of that and made her a loom, and a good one too.

     From 1840 to 1843 we rolled along the best we could, me opening up a few acres of land occasionally, until we had quite a little farm.  Needing some cash, two of my cousins and I built a flat boat and took another load of produce to New Orleans.  We sold out, boat and all, making a handsome profit and went home with our heads up.

     About this time the people concluded the militia must be organized in Izard County.  The people ran me for Captain.  In my stump speech I says: "Gentlemen and fellow citizens I am a candidate for Captain of Muster of the first district of Izard County, Arkansas, and if elected will fill the office to the best of my ability."  Then I says come on all them that votes for me and all them that don't vote for me perhaps their mind will change before I am a candidate again and lets have some cider and here they all come hollowing, "ho ra! for Captain Sams."  They could not get my opponent to treat to a thing, as I called out more cider.  When the votes were counted out that evening I had one hundred and seventy six votes and my opponent had six votes.

     One day some of my friends come to me and said, "Were going to run you for justice of the peace."  I told them that I didn't have learning enough for that office but they run me anyway and I went to electioneering on every occasion.  On election day I made on speech but there had come in some more voters, and I got up again, but before I got up we all went and I got a half gallon of red eye and they took it freely.  I told the young men and ladies, and all the old bachelors and old maids, all the widowers and widows, and particularly the pretty girls, you go to work and elect me and if your fellows don't have the chink to pay for the Gordesion knot to be tied don't put it off, just come to me and let me know, and I will be on hand, sure, and I will take my pay in chickens, roasting ears, dried punkins or green punkins etc.  Then the crowd commenced hollowing for Sams and I was elected.

     After I was elected I had several applications to marry people before I was commissioned.  At that time I could not write a legible hand.  I went to studying law by pine lights of a night, in the statute laws of Arkansas.  I found out by an old lawyer friend of mine that there were some more books that would be great in my business.  So I sent off and got "Blackstone," "Greenleaf and Chitty."  I suppose they were the first in the country.  I had never seen nor heard of them before in a justice court before mine.  I served as justice of the peace for five succeeding terms.

     Then I served two terms as associate Judge and next was elected county and probate judge.  My opponent was Andrew Pugh of the Wadkins party.  I beat him five to one.  This was when the county seat was moved from Old Athens to Mt. Olive and the excitement was very high.

     After my third term as county judge, I quit politics except I was elected several times afterwards as Justice of the Peace.  I will tell you the conditions of the finance of Izard County when I was first installed as Judge.  At that time county script was worth only forty cents on the dollar.  The county seat had been moved from Athens to Mt. Olive and all the old buildings was to be sold at a reduced price of course.  When I stepped out of office the script was worth as much as bank paper which was ninety five cents on a dollar.

     In those days we were economical and let the poor man have his rights as well as the rich man.  We did not take from a poor man and give it to a rich man as they do now.  Our legislators got three dollars a day and said it was enough, now they get six and say it ain't too much.

     Me and my wife kept on at work, farming and raising stock and me working in the blacksmith shop.  We made money very fast to have no capital.  At last we bought us two likely slaves and, in 1858, my father, who lived in Kentucky at that time, gave me a negro woman and two children.

     (According to Sams, the Civil War in this region consisted mainly of guerilla warfare; robbing, plundering, burning, and killing.  Sams was a strong secessionist.  He said:)

     Then comes 1863 and they quit fighting and a great many on both sides began to charge widow women's corn cribs and smoke houses, and killing old men and some boys and burning men's feet to make them tell where their money was and some men they would shoot down, one man I had known for years by the name of Judge Easley who was on his death bed was robbed by a squad of Jayhawkers, who come to his house and demanded his cash.  They finally turned the old man's bed over and found six hundred dollars in cash which they took.  The old Judge died in a few days after.

     Sams tells of the feigned robbing of a friend, one Mrs. Durham, of her money in order that the news might get out and thus prevent the Jayhawkers from robbing her.  Also Judge Sams had his half brother, Dr. Thomas Culp, put out the story that Sams had been robbed.  Culp went to Benbrook's mill and told that the old Judge was robbed, that the Jayhawkers had been at his house the night before and took all his money.  He told that there was ten of them and that they came cursing and went off cursing.  This was told in a crowd at the mill and the news spread like wild fire.  Sams was said to appear to look very sad, and tell them that he did not know what to do, his cash all gone and negroes all set free.

    There was a Captain Cochran, who had formely lived in Baxter County, Arkansas in 1861 and 62.  Some of his family are living there yet and are good citizens as far as I know.  Cochran went off in 1863 with the federals, but once and awhile in the same year and also in 1864 he would come back with a posse and take our stock and drive them off to Missouri and other markets and sell them for what he could get.

    In 1864, in April, Cochran came again and went around with his men, black and white, and gathered up the stock again.  they took all the horses, mules and cattle they could find, and then took all the little mite of bread stuff and bacon and everything else they could find.  They left us in a bad fix.  He went to Bob Wolf's, one of his old acquaintances.  Wolf had just rode up on his mule, the only one he had.  Cochran said: "Wolf I must have that mule, saddle and all,"  and he took it.  He commenced getting up all the corn and wheat he could find and taking it to Daniel's mill on White river and having it ground to get it ready to start off to Missouri.

     So we began to get volunteers as fast as we could, men who we could depend on, and camped out about one mile Southeast of the Sugar Loaf mountain on White river.  They had only twelve men.  In camp we counted fifteen on our side.  We sent for Lige McMahan and Frank Russell to recruit all they could and they brought in seventeen more and away we went after the Cochran gang.  When we got to Daniel's mill they had been gone about an hour.

     When we got close to them we formed two in a breast and started.  It was a very good road until we got within about forty yards of where we overtaken the Jayhawkers.  They were crossing a gulley or drean and were so closely engaged with their teams that they did not see us till we were right on them.

     Cochran was with the hindmost wagon.  There were four wagons well loaded with provisions and other goods that they had taken from the citizens round in the country.  We overtaken them one mile above old Jud Adams on White river just above Ships ferry where they were aiming on fording the river on their way off.  They had carrelled their horses and other stock on the other side of the river.  There was three boys and two men there watching the stock.

     When Cochran saw us he threw up his hands and said "If you are federals I am not afraid of you."  We gave him no answer only commenced shooting at them.  Cochran shot at us two fires with his postol and then he run up a bluff about forty yards to a ledge of rocks and leaned over forwards on the ledge and lay there dead.  We searched Cochran and took all his valuables and then throwed him off the bluff.  In the search a day book was found in which the names of fifty five men purported they had killed since the year 1861.  Some were men that we knew.  One was Reames and one was Shrable.

     We then hunted up and killed two negroes that we knew were in cochran's gang, Wat McCubans and "Gumbo" Charley.  "Gumbo" Charley's crime was in revealling where Mrs. Tinner's bread corn was hidden in a cave and in taking an old woman's oxen.  As we went back home the widow women and children we met would ask if Cochran was dead and when we told them he was, they rejoiced at it and said, "we will have peace one more time on earth."  This was the end of the war here.

     At an early date the Everet brothers come to the valley of White river.  They first come to Lawrence County on Black river, and a short time afterwards they moved to White river and settled in the east end of Izard County, in that part which was later placed in Marion County.