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

34. At Nunnely’s Landing

242  Red River Reminiscences ceed on his journey, instead of staying at Colonel Scott’s a whole week, as he had first proposed to do. Reluctantly, and after much useless persuasion, the Colonel and his wife consented to his departure ; and after breakfast his horse was saddled and brought to the door; and while “Pete” was busy adjusting his saddlebags, the poor victim of these merciless “Arkansaw jokes” attempted to offer something in the way of compensation for his entertainment, but, remembering what his Hempstead County friends had told him—that Colonel Scott would construe the offer of money into an insult and resent it as such—he was at a loss what to say. But, upon shaking hands with the Colonel and his wife and “Andy,” and bidding them good-bye, he ventured to say: “I do not know, my friends, how I shall ever be able to repay you for your kindness and—” “Oh, never mind,” said the Colonel, cutting him short, “put it all in your book.” “Yes,” said Armstrong, “put it in your book, and if you ever come to White Oak Shoals, look up Andy Armstrong, and Kittie and I will show you how we are prepared to take care of every straggling OUTSIDER.” 34  At Nunnely’s Landing • The Relief had arrived at Nunnely’s Landing in Letter 31, but Withenbury interrupted his account in the next two letters to provide a description of the practical joke played by Tom Scott and Andy Armstrong. Although the present letter deals with Nunnely’s Landing, much of the content is re- The Reminiscences  243 lated to an incident concerning the Concord in 1838 when (under Jonathan Hildreth as captain and Erasmus Philley as pilot) it terminated its Upper Red River trip at Nunnely’s Landing, as recounted in Letter 2. The account of the incident is derived by Withenbury from Philley in Cincinnati at the time he is writing the letters. John Nunnely’s home was at present-day Ogden, Arkansas, and he owned extensive bottom lands to the south and southwest according to U.S. General Land Office land records. The landing was to the south, a short distance above White Oak Shoals, and was a steamboat landing of modest importance. Nunnely was from North Carolina, married Mary Ann Easley (with whom he had seven children ), came to the Red River about 1838, and died in 1848 at the age of 58.1 Nunnely is mentioned occasionally as a reference in Shreveport newspaper advertisements by New Orleans cotton merchants.  I n my last two numbers I have allowed myself to drift so far inland as to lose sight entirely of all steamboat matters and men; and I suppose I owe a long apology to such of my readers as feel a general interest in river matters, locate them where you will, but who, being strangers to the characters and places on which I have been dwelling so much at length, may have failed to find enough of interest to repay them for the time spent in following me in my wanderings. Probably the best apology I can make is to go back to the Relief and “Uncle Joe Ross,” at Nunnelly’s Landing, to which point 244  Red River Reminiscences I allowed them to precede me when I stopped in my narrative at Pine Prairie, lured there by the recollections of Colonel Tom Scott and Andy Armstrong and their drolleries. But before I resume the history of that long trip of the Relief, I must say a few words in explanation of the unexplained part of my last chapter. I have said it was to this day a secret who penned the sealed letter which the New Yorker carried to Tom Scott, and so it is; but, as I heard, several years after the occurrence of the events which I have so imperfectly narrated, that the writing of that letter was attributed to Judge Field, of Hempstead County,2 I will state that when accused of it he was able to deny it flatly and successfully, for in “the language of the law,” he could prove an alibi. He was at that very time on one of his occasional visits “to Nashville,” and so could not have been the guilty one. Those of his old comrades who may still be living will not fail to remember how completely these visits of his “to...