A Sunday afternoon lecture at the P.J. Ahern Home Museum about Miller County and the Arkansas Territory continues the celebration of a 200-year milestone.
"This year marks the bicentennial of Arkansas being admitted to the United States as a territory," said Jamie Simmons, curator at the Texarkana Museums System.
The bicentennial talk starting at 1:30 p.m. is part of a program shared by Christine Woodrow, New Boston Library's director, that discusses Miller County's development and the Wavell Colony failure during the Arkansas territorial period. It's free to see, but reservations are encouraged.
"Anytime you speak about Miller County, Ark., you also have to include Bowie County, Texas, because at one time Arkansas claimed what's now Bowie County, and it was considered part of Miller County. That's part of what you're going to learn in the lecture," Simmons said, "that whole complicated issue of the various incarnations of Miller County before it became the county we know in 1874."
During this territorial period, Simmons said, there was confusion about where people were actually living. "The line was not settled definitively between Mexico and the United States, and of course at that time that was the line between Texas and Arkansas."
Also, the curator said, this part of Arkansas was slow to gain population because of this confusion. "People just did not know if they were going to be in the States or if they were going to be a Mexican citizen," she said.
Farm land, though, drew people here. That said, the area had a reputation as being "wild and dangerous," Simmons said. "There were accounts of dangerous people who lived here," she said, adding, "I have to say it's a reputation that Arkansas has spent 200 years trying to dispel, as well."
After all, it was wilderness, and there were tough people living in it, not afraid to fight, Simmons said. "The first Europeans and Americans who would have been settling in this area would have lived off the land in a similar manner to the Native Americans who were already living here," she said.
The Wavell Colony was part of a concerted effort to bring settlers to this area. "Arthur Wavell was one of the Spanish empresarios who were given land grants to start colonies in what they considered Mexico," Simmons said. And Wavell's portion included land in Northeast Texas and into what's now Miller County, the edge of which at some points was the Red River.
The exact boundaries of this Wavell Colony are part of what's under discussion during Woodrow's lecture.
"A lot of the people who ended up being permanent settlers to this area, this corner of the state, came to be part of that colony. The history of that kind of overlaps with the history of Miller County because they considered parts of Arkansas to be part of that Mexican land grant," Simmons said.
Woodrow is also secretary of the Texarkana Genealogical Society. She's researched ownership in both Miller and Bowie counties. "So of course doing research is in her blood," Simmons said.
(Reservations can be made at the P.J. Ahern Home Facebook page. The P.J. Ahern Home Museum is located at 403 Laurel St. in downtown Texarkana. More info: Call 903-793-4831 or email [email protected].)