Captain W. W. Withenbury's 1838–1842 "Red River Reminiscences"

31. At Pine Prairie

The Reminiscences  223 Bryarly’s. Most of the cotton deposited there for shipment, has been hauled to the hills, and that which remains has been elevated four feet above the earth.” 5. For baling cotton. 6. The location of the landing as shown in Figure 6 is chosen because it was the highest point among McKinney’s properties along the river and because the survey records for Ashley McKinney’s headright (immediately to the west of Collin’s) in the Texas General Land Office say that Ashley’s headright was about one-half mile west of McKinney’s Landing. The landing was on a bend of the river that has since been cut off and is now designated Roseborough Lake. The survey records for Collin’s headright in the Texas General Land Office disappeared many years ago. However, the area in which the landing was located was subject to an archeological investigation that was reported on by Kathleen Gilmore in her 1986 French-Indian Interaction at an 18th Century Frontier Post; The Roseborough Lake Site, Bowie County, Texas. Gilmore cites an October 1, 1835, Collin McKinney Survey in the McKinney Papers in the Garrett Collection at the University of Texas at Arlington, which says that the northwest corner of the survey began at a point about three-fourths of a mile below McKinney’s house. This would mean that the house was located contiguous to the landing. 31  At Pine Prairie • Pine Prairie was located in southwest Little River County, which in 1842 was part of Sevier County. The name referred to a settlement that is still in existence, a landing to the south, and the prairie on which the settlement was located . Pine Prairie had been a keelboat landing and was an important steamboat landing located on a bend of the river that has since been cut off. The settlement and the landing were located on properties owned by Robert H. Scott,1 224  Red River Reminiscences who appeared in the 1850 Sevier County census (Sevier was created out of Hempstead in 1828) as a 61-year-old planter born in South Carolina. Scott had brought his family to Pine Prairie in 1834 and was county judge from 1836–1840 according to the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas. Withenbury introduced Robert’s son Tom, who was the perpetrator of a practical joke described in the next two letters.  [First part not used.] O ur arrival at McKinney’s Landing, where I left the Relief in my last chapter, in order to follow the old patriarch to the “three forks of Trinity,” and where I with so little ceremony buried him among his children, occurred at an early hour in the morning, and we hastened along with rather unusual dispatch for “Uncle Joe,” hoping to reach the White Oak Shoals before dark. And now in view of the prosiness of my descriptions of all the previous incidents of this trip, I feel like passing in silence every intermediate point between McKinney’s and the raft. [Rest of paragraph not used.] But as I am passing Pine Prairie, some twenty or so miles below McKinney’s, and see standing there upon the bank the venerable form of Judge Scott, the proprietor of that Arkansas plantation , who, with his head uncovered, and with his old slouched white hat in his hand, is waving us a welcome as we approach, and hear his voice as we glide along close to the shore, bidding us God speed, and a quick return, I feel that it is quite impossible to proceed without stopping here in my narrative and introducing to those who have had the patience to follow me, and stick to me, a The Reminiscences  225 few of the people along here on the Arkansas side of the river— among them a son of Judge Scott, who, for years, was honored with a seat in the Arkansas Legislature, which body has never, since the organization of the State, failed, even up to the present day, to furnish ample materials for the descriptive powers of better pens than mine. But I find that I shall not in this chapter have space to properly place before my readers Colonel Tom Scott, of Sevier County, Arkansas, and so I will close this number at Pine Prairie, notwithstanding the Relief did reach, on this day’s run, ’Squire Nunnaley’s, five miles above the...