Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 12/02/09

SUMMARY

The Arthur Daniel Malone House is being submitted to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places for nomination under Criteria B and C with local significance. As the home of prominent businessman Arthur Daniel Malone, a founder of Plumerville, owner of mercantile stores and machine shops, land speculator, and one time President of the Plumerville Bank, the home reflects the taste and sensibility of Arkansas’s rural elite in the New South. One of the few remaining structures of its age in the community, the home reflects a lengthy vernacular architectural tradition from I-House to Carpenter Gothic to Colonial Revival.

Substantial renovations completed on the home in the 1950s dramatically changed the way the home looked from it’s original construction. The home no longer reflected the period when Arthur Daniel Malone lived in the home. Therefore the home is not eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Nevertheless, the home does maintain enough integrity in feeling, association, materials, and workmanship that it is a good example of the Plain Traditional form with Folk Victorian influence.

ELABORATION

Arthur Daniel Malone was born in 1853 in Frankfort, Alabama, and was the second surviving son of Elisha D. and Mary A. (Taff) Malone.[1] Arthur was the middle of three boys all of whom settled in the vicinity of Plumerville: Elias, Arthur, and Vince. Elias was born in 1844, and Vince in 1856. The Malone family moved to Conway County in approximately 1856 and resided in Washington Township until after the Civil War, when they moved to Union Township.

Not much is known of Arthur’s early life except that he spent his boyhood days working on the family farm and studying at home. Likely he helped his older brother Elias as well.Elias received a land grant in 1875 for eighty acres in the South ½ of the Southeast quarter of Section 17, Township 7 North, Range 15 West.[2] He was educated at Rally Hill in Boone County and at Mountain Home in Baxter County in the late 1870s.[3]

After returning from school he began teaching and also operated a grocery for one year. In 1879, A. D. opened a general store at the new town which was quickly becoming the center of local commerce.[4]

The founding of Plumerville is closely connected with the construction of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad.Construction began on the railroad in 1869 and it was completed through Conway County in 1872.[5] Though settlement in the area began well before 1872 there was no town at this location prior to the arrival of the railroad. The railroad placed a station at what would become Plummerville, naming it after Samuel Plummer who owned land through which the railroad traversed. The Plummer family purchased ten acres of land in the present site of Plumerville, according to records kept by the now deceased Hobbs Horton. Hobbs Horton, the great-grandson of Samuel Plummer, owned the town drug store and later a grocery store with his wife Lena. Hobbs and Lena were friends of the Malone family and lived next door in a house that A. D. built.

One family story tells of A. D. and Mr. Plummer donating land and trying to decide how to name the town—each preferring a form of their own name. A. D. lost the coin toss and the town became Plumerville. In consolation, A. D. got a street named after him—Malone Street. Although this story doesn’t fit well with the timeline of events and is probably a family myth, Malone Street does exist today and though not opened to the northwest from Highway 64 the right-of-way runs northwest to southeast right through the property.

The first business in Plumerville was a saloon operated by L. M. McClure and opened in 1872. The first general store was opened in 1874, by F. P. Hervey and J. R. K. Hobbs under the name of Hervey & Hobbs.[6] In 1879, A. D. opened the Malone Bros. Mercantile Company, a general store located in downtown Plumerville close to the railroad tracks and Gap Creek. Elias and Vince were partners in the business. The mercantile business seemed to fit A. D. as he continued in the business and by 1891, had an annual profit of $20,000.[7] In 1883, Arthur married Rosa B. Dacus and by 1900, they had six children (Eula, Ethel, Helen, Arthur, Lucile and Anderson) and were living in a home on Malone Street.[8]

A. D. eventually parlayed his mercantile success into a number of other ventures including securities and banking and was President of the Bank of Plumerville, which was founded in approximately 1902, with a capitalization of $15,000.[9] He also was member of the Levee District, Conway County, the Special School District 39, and Fence District No. 1.[10] By the late 1910s, A. D. amassed a large property holding of approximately 800 acres.

The property held under the name of A. D. Malone Mercantile Company was primarily bottomland along the Arkansas River. His holdings stretched from Lonoke County to Conway County.A. D. is listed in a number of law journals for being involved in various property disputes that led to the establishment of new legal precedents in property law in Arkansas.[11]

Arthur was also a founding member, along with his wife Rosa Belle, of the Plumerville Methodist Church. The church is still located in downtown Plumerville today. Although the original structure is long lost, the modern building still houses the church’s original stained glass windows. These were donated by founders and important members.A. D. and Rosa Belle’s name can still be seen on the window today.

The Malone Bros. Mercantile venture and all of A. D.’s liquid wealth was lost in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. A. D. died in 1945. His youngest son William sold most of the family land holdings over his lifetime, with the exception of the remaining 13 acres.

Malone Family and historical events of local significance

Elias Malone, A. D.’s older brother, served in the Confederate Army after enlisting in 1864, Company B, 3^rd Arkansas Cavalry.Company B operated in Central and Western Arkansas. Elias participated in several skirmishes and was once captured by Union Troops in Gregory Township. A. D. was 11 years old at the time. An oral account taken from Hobbs Horton tells of A. D. seeing Rebel troops racing their horses during leisure time on the banks of the Arkansas River down in the Plumerville “bottoms.”

A. D. and the Town of Plumerville were also affected by the events of Reconstruction. One family story speaks of a carpetbagger coming to town. People didn’t take too kindly to it so they shot him, wrapped him up in a carpet and put him on a train headed back up North. What was believed to be simply folk tale seems proven by Kenneth C. Barnes in his book, Who Killed John Clayton.[12]

Clayton was a candidate for the United States Congress. During the election of 1888, it was rumored that a group of armed and masked men stole the ballot box from Plumerville. This theft resulted in the loss of a number of African American, and supposedly Republican, ballots. The loss of these ballots all but guaranteed a loss for Clayton. Clayton announced that he would contest the vote and came to Plumerville to undertake the process. One evening Clayton was assassinated in his room in Plumerville.[13]

Imagine the Malone family’s surprise when Kenneth Barnes wrote, “the plan to kill John Clayton was hatched around the old country stove of A. D. Malone’s general store.”

Malone House: design, construction, uniqueness

The Arthur Daniel Malone House is a vernacular frame home constructed by local carpenters and the Malone family over a period of almost twenty years. Construction on the home began in 1883 and is believed to have been complete by 1910. The home is essentially a two-story variation of the gable front and wing form of the Folk Victorian. Unlike many homes of this style, the Malone House features a rear addition, an additional cross gable, and a one-story side addition. The home, with wrap-around porch and Doric columns was primarily, but not strictly, symmetrical. The second floor porch featured an elaborate jig-saw cut balustrade.

In the early 1950s, William D. Malone, grandson of A. D., undertook a series of renovations on the home. This renovation work included removing the gable front and the side porch. This removal changed the form of the home from gable front and wing to a symmetrical, two-story, I-house form. The three quarter porch was offset to the left of the front façade and the jig-saw cut balustrade was replicated for the lower porch. In the side addition, the kitchen was remodeled and updated, a south facing porch was enclosed to make a sunroom, and the former smokehouse was converted into a laundry.

Most of Plumerville’s homes and buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been torn down or were lost to fire. For instance, the Simm’s Hotel, site of John Clayton’s murder, was torn down in the mid 1980s. At the same time, other homes built by A. D. for his children are still standing—but they are not substantially similar. Helen’s house, A. D.’s third child, was located on the south side of Highway 64; unfortunately it burned in 1979.

Lena and Hobbs Horton’s plain traditional home with colonial revival influence, built by A. D., still stands to the west of the Malone Home. Arthur also built the house to the east as a wedding present for his fifth child, Lucille, and her husband Jack Wilbanks. This home remained in the family until the 1980s. The home is a craftsman influence bungalow. A second craftsman style bungalow constructed by Arthur is further south along Malone Street though little is known about the history of this home.

Malone House also has several remaining outbuildings and ruins of past structures. The garage is located on the west side of the home near the property line between Malone House and Lena Horton’s house. A specific date of construction for this garage is unknown. Looking at its farm-field type mortar construction, it may date from the advent of automobiles in the area—late 1930s to 1940s—but the family has no records. A partially standing barn is also located on the northern portion of the property. The date of construction is unknown, but A. D.’s diary mentions making repairs to it in 1937. Foundations for the outhouse and servants quarters can also be found in the woods behind the house to the north. The servant’s cabin is also mentioned in A. D.’s diary. They have been left undisturbed.

[2] United States Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records, United States to Elias Malone, Application Number 4657, Certificate Number 419, December 20, 1875. Available online at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/; accession number AR0310__.267. Accessed September 9, 2009.

[3] Leonard, 435.

[4] Goodspeed Publishing Company, Historical Reminiscences and Biographical Memoirs of Conway County, Arkansas (Little Rock: Arkansas Historical Publishing Company, 1890; reprinted as an appendix in The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas, Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1978), 88.

[5] Ibid., 38.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 88.

[8] United States Census, 1880, 1900. He had 2 additional sons, James and William, the latter born in 1906. William was our Grandfather.

[9] Bankers Magazine, “New Banks, Bankers,” The Bankers Magazine, Volume 64, No. 5 (May 1902), 747.

[10] Leonard, 435.

[11] See Roach v. A. D. Malone Mercantile Company, 135 Ark. 69 (1918) and 204 S.W. 971 (1918).Also Malone v. Wade, 148 Ark. 548 (1921).

[12] Kenneth C.Barnes, Who Killed John Clayton? Political Violence and the Emergence of the New South, 1861 – 1893, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.

[13] Mary Ellen Guffey Brents, “Conway County,” Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Available on the internet at http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/.Accessed September 10, 2009.

SIGNIFICANCE

The Arthur Daniel Malone House reflects the affluence of our once bustling villages. Often the modern inhabitants of Arkansas’s small towns and villages feel that what they see know is the way their town has always been. It is easy to assume that these isolated towns have always been this way. Homes like the Arthur Daniel Malone House, by their preservation, contradict these modern assumptions. They reflect a period when the railroad was central to commerce and the rural population was much more compact. Towns like Plumerville served as centers of commerce for much larger rural populations. The town itself was larger and more diverse; there was a prosperity that is seemingly missing now.

Unfortunately the home was extensively renovated in the 1950s. Certainly these renovations are an important part of the home’s history and reflect a continuing vernacular adaptive tradition begun in the twenty year period of the home’s construction. Yet, the changes give a false sense of what architectural form reflected affluence in the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that this home is unlike any in Plumerville and has the feeling of an early twentieth century home. The home does in fact serve as a reminder, more so with the continuing loss of commercial structures, of this small community’s affluent and influential past.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bankers Magazine, “New Banks, Bankers.” The Bankers Magazine, Volume 64, No. 5 (May 1902).

Barnes, Kenneth C. 1998. Who Killed John Clayton? Emergence of the New South, 1861 – 1893. Duke University Press, Durham.

Brents, Mary Ellen Guffey. “Conway County.” Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Available on the internet at http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/. Accessed September 10, 2009.

Leonard, John William. Who’s Who in Finance, Banking, and Insurance, Volume 2. Brooklyn, NY: Who’s Who in Finance, Inc., 1922.

Goodspeed Publishing Company. Historical Reminiscences and Biographical Memoirs of Conway County, Arkansas. Little Rock: Arkansas Historical Publishing Co., 1890.

________. Historical Reminiscences and Biographical Memoirs of Conway County, Arkansas. Little Rock: Arkansas Historical Publishing Company, 1890; reprinted as an appendix in The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas, Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1978.

________. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas. Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1891.

United States. Bureau of Land Management. General Land Office Records. United States to Elias Malone, Application Number 4657, Certificate Number 419, December 20, 1875. Available online at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/; accession number AR0310__.267. Accessed September 9, 2009.

www.heritagequestonline.com, Search Census Images, 1790 – 1930.

www.heritagequestonline.com, Search U.S. Serial Set; Memorials, petitions and private release actions of US Congress.