Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 12/02/15

Summary

The Byrd Memorial was erected in Gray Rock, Arkansas, in 1918 to honor former slaves Allen and Sarah Byrd. The Byrd Memorial is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, with local significance, for its association with the African-American history of Logan County and under Criteria Consideration F, as a commemorative property that was erected by the Byrd family in memory of Allen and Sarah Byrd in 1918. After the monument was established, the Byrd family has continued to celebrate their history at the site of the memorial and the adjacent Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. This site has become the central focus for the family’s memory of the Byrd family’s contribution to the development of the African-American community of Gray Rock and the surrounding area. Although the Byrd Memorial has become a place that subsequent generations of the Byrd family have associated with the family’s early history, the memorial was not considered eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to the guidelines on memorial properties and their inherent significance as outlined in Criteria Consideration F. The site, however, is still an important, locally significant, marker of history for the community and was determined to be Arkansas Register eligible.

Elaboration

History of Logan County

Logan County has always been an agricultural area in western Arkansas. The area now encompassed by Logan County includes some of the oldest settlements along the Arkansas River, west of Little Rock.[1] Although several bands of Choctaw and Cherokee had settlements in the area in the 1820s, treaties and western white expansion drove the Native Americans further west. During the 1820s and 1830s, settlers poured into the area and established farms and communities. Roseville, an important early port town established in the area, during the first wave of white immigration, was an important link for transporting people, goods and crops down the Arkansas River.[2] Throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Logan County has primarily been an agricultural center, with small farms growing various crops, including cotton and corn.[3]

Logan County was initially a part of the much larger Franklin County, immediately after Arkansas statehood. After the Civil War, Logan County was created by the state legislature from parts of Franklin, Scott, Yell, and Johnson counties.[4] Initially named Sarber County, after a Republican senator from Johnson County and a veteran of the Union Army, the act to create the new county was passed in 1871.[5] A new town was created as the county seat, and the town of Paris grew up around the newly platted courthouse square.[6] In 1875, the name was changed to Logan County, after local politicians objected to the naming of the county after Sarber, instead insisting on naming the county after early settler James Logan, with Paris as the official county seat.[7] In 1901, the county was divided into two judicial districts, with Booneville serving as the seat for the Southern Judicial District. Paris remained the seat for the Northern Judicial District.[8]

The Byrd Family

In 1815, a boy named Allen was born into slavery on the Titsworth Plantation near Roseville.[9] Allen’s mother, a slave of the Titsworth family, was brought to Arkansas when the Titsworth family moved to the area from Kentucky.[10] Allen grew up on the plantation with another young slave girl named Sarah, who would eventually become his wife.[11] Sarah was born into slavery around 1820 in Maryland and was brought to Arkansas by another member of the Titsworth family who also moved to Arkansas soon after John Titsworth moved to the area with his family.[12] Allen and Sarah were only two of over one hundred slaves owned by John Titsworth and his family in the years before the Civil War.[13]

The Titsworth family and their slaves arrived in Arkansas from Kentucky, settling along the Arkansas River near Roseville in the early 19^th century.[14] What would grow to become Titsworth Plantation, near Roseville, was started by John “Jack” Titsworth, most likely accompanied by his father Isaac Titsworth, mother Nancy Titsworth and two brothers David and Spear, sometime around 1814.^[15] John Titsworth’s wife, Adalisia, and children eventually followed him to his new holdings in Arkansas. By 1840, the United States Census lists John Titsworth on a large farm in the Roseville vicinity that included 11 free white persons, including his wife and children, and 33 slaves.[16] By 1840, both of John’s parents had passed away and were buried in the family cemetery near Roseville. The large Titsworth plantation continued to grow throughout the decades leading up to the civil war, eventually encompassing $60,000 worth of real-estate and $33,000 worth of personal property owned by John’s heir Randolph Titsworth in 1860.^[17] In 2015 dollars, $60,000 would be worth over $1.6 million.

A slave narrative, collected by workers for the Federal Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938, mentions the Titsworth plantation and the slaves who lived there.[18] Sweetie Ivery Wagoner, who was born sometime around 1865, remembered her family belonging to the Titsworths and living on land near the Arkansas River in Arkansas. Before the Civil War, Wagoner’s family had been one of several slave families on the plantation.[19] While Wagoner described the slave families as well fed and well treated, he also notes that slave families were really only valued as a source for children and that even then, child birth did not guarantee a family would be kept together.^[20] Wagoner also notes that the Titsworth family evacuated to Texas with at least some of their slaves during the Civil War. ^[21] The war years devastated the Titsworth family, with John Titsworth, the patriarch passing away in 1863, his wife Adalisia Titsworth passing away in 1862, and Randolph Titsworth in 1864.[22] Randolph’s bachelor brothers, Aldmon and Edwin Newton “Newt” Titsworth continued to farm the families land near Roseville after the Civil War by leasing out land and hiring and boarding farm laborers in the family home.[23] Descendants of the Titsworth family continued to live in Roseville, Paris and the surrounding area during the 20^th century.

Allen and Sarah were parents to sixteen children, all but one of whom was born in Arkansas, and all born into slavery. Daughter Mintie, born in 1863 or 1864, was born in Texas. Allen and Sarah may have been moved with other slaves owned by the Titsworths to Texas during part of the war to avoid raiders and bushwhackers operating in the Logan County area. Allen and Sarah may also have been free-persons by 1863, as Byrd family oral history suggests that Allen, having been freed by his slave master, bought Sarah’s freedom as well.[24] Allen’s freedom may have been granted upon the death of John Titsworth in 1863. This would still have allowed Sarah and Allen to flee to Texas with their children during the hardest years of the Civil War. After gaining their freedom, Allen and Sarah took the last name of Bird. Although some slaves are known to have taken their previous master’s family name, Sarah and Allen claimed their own identity by taking a name independent of their recent enslaved past. Family oral history relates that Bird may have been the first name of Allen’s father, who may have been a member of the slave owning Titsworth family.[25] This may be corroborated in the designation of the Bird family as “mulatto” in the 1880 United States Federal Census, rather than the designation of “black”. The spelling of the family’s last name was eventually changed to Byrd between 1880 and 1890.[26]

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Allen and Sarah Byrd settled on land south of Roseville, near to the Titsworth family land holdings. The settlement and development of what would become the community of Gray Rock predated the creation of the county seat of Paris to the south and thus predating the later commercial development of the Paris area. Allen Byrd was known as one of the first free Black men to own land in Logan County, having either been given or bought 80 acres of land from the Titsworth family not long after the Civil War. Byrd family oral history notes that the Titsworth family gave 40 acres of land to ex-slaves and then offered and additional 40 acres of land for purchase by some ex-slave families. Land records from the time note that Allen was the owner of 80 acres of land by 1876.[27] Byrd family oral history places this land ownership beginning in 1866, with formal recording of the land ownership by 1896.

Allen and Sarah chose to stay in the area they knew well, and where they had grown-up and raised their children. The children of Allen and Sarah Byrd included three children who died in infancy or early childhood, sons Isiah, Zacharias, Jordan John, Mansfield Montgomery, Alexander Suggs, King Seth, Jonas Hezekiah, and Martin; and daughters Jane, Belle, Violet, Louisa, and Mintie “Tish”. Son Zacharias left Roseville to fight in the Civil War. He is thought to have survived the war, but never returned to Arkansas. Five of the Byrd sons came to be known by descendants as the “Five Old Men”; they are Jordan, Montgomery, Suggs “Turk”, King Seth and Jonas.[28] Many of the Byrd children remained in the area and raised families. Eventually, Sarah and Allen Byrd would have over 35 grand-children. During the decades following the Civil War, Allen Byrd continued to accumulate landholdings. By 1880, the area north of Paris, Arkansas, was home to several households of Byrd descendents, all farmers, allowing Allen and Sarah to be surrounded by their children and grand-children.[29] Allen Byrd passed away on November 26, 1886. His wife Sarah Byrd’s death date is unknown.

Allen and Sarah provided for their children by deeding 40 acres to each of their twelve children. Records exist for transfer of 40 acres to son King Byrd in 1876, daughter Jane in 1883, and son Mansfield Montgomery in 1890.[30] The transfer of 40 acres of land to Jane in 1883 also included the exception of one acre that was dedicated for the use of the local church and school, the Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church

As free men and women, the members of the Byrd family were instrumental in the development of the community of former slaves living in the Roseville and Paris area. Central to this community was the church. The desire and will to create independent institutions separate from the religious institutions of former slave masters were sweeping the South and the creation of a church for the small, but growing community of south of Roseville was an imperative. [31]

Five years after the liberation of 1865, 41 former slaves organized their own separate and independent Colored Methodist Church in Jackson, Tennessee. [32] This church, created by former members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is a branch of Wesleyan Methodism, which was established in the United States as the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784.[33] This branch of Methodism continues today as the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, having been renamed in 1954.[34]

The move to create a separate church was strong in Roseville and the surrounding community. Answering the call, Allen and Sarah Byrd donated one acre of land to the Methodist Church to build a new church and school. In the handwritten document which formally deeded the land on July 14, 1881, Allen and Sarah provided that if the land was not used for this purpose it would revert to the estate of son Zacharias.[35] Allen’s son King Byrd is named as one of three Trustees on the document for the land transfer.[36] The land on which the church was built was part of a larger parcel of land that remained in the hands of Allen Byrd until 1883, when he sold this land to his daughter Jane for one dollar except for the one acre that was deeded to the Church.[37]

This newly founded Methodist Church would become the Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Like other Colored Methodist Churches in the country and as required in the deed, Gray Rock was a place of worship and a schoolhouse to educate the children of former slaves to assume their rightful place as citizens. During slavery, teaching a slave to read and write generally was forbidden. Having been raised as slaves, Allen and Sarah were no exception. Records show that Allen and Sarah Byrd signed deeds transferring land to their children with an “X”.[38]

The Gray Rock CME Church became the center of the community for former slaves who were now sharecroppers and land owners. The community of Gray Rock grew up around the Church, with the church serving an early town hall for community meetings. Weddings and funerals, often the largest social gatherings in the community, were held at Gray Rock CME Church. To accommodate the growing school age population, a new, larger school building named Booker T. Washington was erected in the early 1900s to the east of the center of the Gray Rock community. As leaders of the community, Byrd family members served on the School Board responsible for raising money to support the new school and to hire teachers.[39] The Booker T. Washington School building has since been altered, after the school consolidated with the Paris School District, and many of the original site features have been lost.

Because of its decaying condition, the original Grey Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church building was replaced with a new structure in 1949. The Church reportedly remained in use until the early years of the 21^st Century. The current church structure is now used sporadically for community gatherings, but is not used for regular church services. Generations of Byrd family members were members and leaders of the Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, often serving as Trustees for the church. C.A. Byrd, a grandson of Allen and Sarah Byrd, served at one time as pastor in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[40]

To honor Allen and Sarah Byrd as the founders and early benefactors of the Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, their children placed an approximately 5-foot tall stone marker at the Church in 1918. The marker was placed at the church by King Seth, Alexander Suggs, Jane, Jordan John, Mansfield Montgomery and Jonas Hezekiah. The marker is an elaborate example of a typical type of memorial or funerary monument of the early 20^th century. The marker memorializes the life and works of both Allen and Sarah Byrd and is not a funerary marker, as Sarah and Allen Byrd are interred in a cemetery near Roseville. This marker still stands as a visible reminder of the influence of the Byrd family in the development of the area after the Civil War.

Allen and Sarah Byrd are buried in the Sugar Hill cemetery in Roseville, a now closed cemetery on private land. The burial place of Allen is marked only by a small, later marker and Sarah’s grave is unmarked. Members of four generations of the Byrd family are buried in the nearby Gray Rock Cemetery located in Paris. The Gray Rock Cemetery is thought to be an old slave cemetery as more than 100 graves are marked unknown. King Byrd, the oldest child of Allen and Sarah, who died in 1923 and his wife Josephine who died in 1913 are buried in the Gray Rock Cemetery. It is also the final resting place of Johanna, the wife of Jordan Byrd, one of the “Five Old Men”, who died in 1932. Allen Byrd, son of Johanna and Jordan, who died in 1963, and his wife Allene, who died one year later in 1964, are also buried in the Gray Rock Cemetery.

Today, 200 years after the birth of the slave Allen, the main road in rural Paris is named Byrd Road in recognition of the central role that he, Sarah and their descendants played in the growth and development of the community. Further, the community surrounding the Gray Rock CME Church has come to be called after the church built by free men and women on land donated by former slaves. The community of Gray Rock has seen seven generations of the Byrd family. Byrd descendents continue to live in the Gray Rock area today, some of them on land passed down through the generations from Allen and Sarah Byrd.

Statement of Significance

The Byrd Memorial in Gray Rock, Arkansas, is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criterion A, with local significance, for its association with the African-American history of Logan County and under Criteria Consideration F, as a commemorative property that was erected by the Byrd family in memory of Allen and Sarah Byrd in 1918. After the monument was established, the Byrd family has continued to celebrate their history at the site of the memorial and the adjacent Gray Rock Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. This site has become the central focus for the family’s memory of the Byrd family’s contribution to the development of the African-American community of Gray Rock and the surrounding area. Although the Byrd Memorial has become a place that subsequent generations of the Byrd family have associated with the family’s early history, the memorial was not considered eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to the guidelines on memorial properties and their inherent significance as outlined in Criteria Consideration F. The site, however, is still an important, locally significant, marker of history for the community and was determined to be Arkansas Register eligible.

Bibliography:

Baker, T. Lindsay, and Julie P. Baker. The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. 1996.

Byrd Family oral histories, as collected by Phyllis Jones, 2015.

Boitel, Jerry. ""Allen Byrd"" Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records. N.p., 21 Aug. 2014. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <http://www.findagrave.com>.

Curry, Patricia L. "Logan County." Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Central Arkansas Library System, 25 Sept. 2015. Web. <www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net>. 13 Oct. 2015.

Curry, Patricia L. "Paris (Logan County)." Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Central Arkansas Library System, 29 April 2015. Web. <www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net>. 13 Oct. 2015.

Elliot, Rev. Charles. History of the Great Secession from the Methodist Church in the Year 1845: Eventuating in the Organization of the New Church, Entitled the “Methodist Episcopal Church South." Cincinnati, OH: Swormstedt & Poe (for the Methodist Episcopal Church). 1855.  

The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas; Yell, Pope, Johnson, Logan, Scott, Polk, Montgomery, and Conway Counties (1889). Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press. 1978.

Hatfield, Edward A. "Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME Church)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 20 August 2013. Web. 13 October 2015.

Interview with Dorothy Lee Byrd Thomas, descendant of members of the original Board of Trustees, Gray Rock CME Church, by Phyllis Jones, 2015.

“Interview with Montgomery Byrd.” Paris Express. 1969.

Interview with Sherri Banks, Byrd Family Historian by Phyllis Jones, 2015.

Lakey, Bishop Othal. "The History of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church." Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. August 6, 2015. Accessed October 13, 2015. http://www.thecmechurch.org/history.htm.

Logan County, Arkansas: Its History and Its People. Arkansas: Logan County Historical Society, 1987.

Raymond R. Somerville, An Ex-Colored Church: Social Activism in the CME church, 1870-1970. Macon, Ga. Mercer university press, 2004. 

Survey of Grey Rock Cemetery conducted on February 23, 1998, by Terry A. Smith and Mildred Collins Wasser.

Titsworth, Lizabeth. "The Fighting Titsworths." Wagon Wheels: The Logan County Historical Socieity Quarterly Pulication 1, no. 5 (1981): 17-19.

U.S. Census Bureau, United States Federal Census, 1840, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920. Ancestry.com.

U.S. General Land Office Records, 1796-1907 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. Accessed 13 Oct. 2015.

Young, David et al, (1860). “The Methodist Almanac: 1861” in Frederick Abbott Noorwood. Sourcebook of American Methodism. Nashville: Abingdon, 1982.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Patricia L. Curry, “Paris (Logan County),” Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Central Arkansas Library System, 13 October 2015.

[7] Curry, “Logan County,” Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Byrd Family Oral Histories, collected by Phyllis Jones, 2015. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1870 and 1880.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Byrd Family Oral Histories, collected by Phyllis Jones, 2015. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1840 and 1860.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Byrd Family Oral Histories, collected by Phyllis Jones, 2015. Lindsay T. Baker, The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996, pp 441-444.

[14] According to family oral history, Allen (Bird) was born into slavery in present day Logan County in 1815. Census records for 1870 and 1880 list Allen Bird’s birth-state as Arkansas and his birth-year as c. 1818 or c. 1815. The land that became the community of Roseville was part of the Choctaw Reservation between 1820 and 1825. The Titsworth family did purchase land in this area from the government once the land was available after 1825. In 1838, several of the Titsworth family members purchased land in Titsworth Township and Roseville Township as well as in present day Washington County according to surviving patent records. If the Titsworth family had settled on land in what would become the Choctaw Reservation, they would have been illegal squatters until the late 1830s.

[15] “Logan County,” The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas; Yell, Pope, Johnson, Logan, Scott, Polk, Montgomery, and Conway Counties (1889, Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1978, p 327.

[16] Ibid. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1840.

[17] U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1860.

[18] Baker, The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives, pp 441-444.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Elizabeth Titsworth, “The Fighting Titsworths,” Wagon Wheels: The Logan County Historical Society Quarterly Publication 1, no. 5 (1981), 17.

[23] U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1880.

[24] Byrd Family Oral Histories, collected by Phyllis Jones, 2015.

[25] Byrd family oral history also notes that “Bird” may have also been the name of a fellow slave at the plantation, or that Sarah had also been known as Bird. The reason that Allen and Sarah chose Bird as their last name remains a family mystery.

[26] U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1880 and 1900. Boitel, Jerry. ""Allen Byrd"" Find A Grave - Millions of Cemetery Records. N.p., 21 Aug. 2014. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <http://www.findagrave.com>.

[27] U.S. General Land Office Records, 1796-1907 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. Accessed 13 Oct. 2015.

[28] It is interesting to note that a teacher on the Titsworth Plantation in 1850 was listed as Alesa Sugg from Alabama. This may be the source for the name Suggs Bird, one of Allen and Sarah Bird’s children. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1850.

[29] U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Federal Census, 1880.

[30] U.S. General Land Office Records, 1796-1907 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. Accessed 13 Oct. 2015. King was deeded land on March 1, 1876. Jane was deeded land on March 8, 1883 and Mansfield M. was deeded land on April 18, 1890.

[31] Edward A. Hatfield, "Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME Church)," New Georgia Encyclopedia, 20 August 2013. Web. 13 October 2015.

[32] Bishop Othal Lakey, "The History of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church," Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. August 6, 2015. Accessed October 13, 2015.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] U.S. General Land Office Records, 1796-1907 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. Accessed 13 Oct. 2015.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] “Montgomery Byrd” in Logan County, Arkansas: Its History and Its People. Arkansas: Logan County Historical Society, 1987.

[40] Byrd Family Oral Histories, collected by Phyllis Jones, 2015.