Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

Hiram A. Whittington

Hiram A. Whittington The Whittington family was among the most prominent in early Arkansas. The Whittingtons settled in Arkansas during the early territorial period, making their homes in early Hot Springs and later Montgomery County. The Whittingtons go back practically to the founding of Salem, the Montgomery County seat, later renamed Mount Ida. The patriarch who brought theWhittington family toArkansas was Hiram Abiff Whittington, who, along with his younger brother, Granville,moved to frontierArkansas from long-settled Massachusetts. Hiram was born in January , in Boston, the son of a middle-class family with deep Puritan roots. At the age of fifteen, Hiram apprenticed as a printer, ultimately training further under Alden Spooner of New York, who mentored William E. Woodruff, the first printer and journalist in Arkansas Territory. Woodruff offered Whittington a printing job, and on Christmas Day,,the twenty-one-year-old made his way into Little Rock, still a bit shocked by the five days it took to travel from Arkansas Post. After working with Woodruff for a few years, Hiram journeyed to Dwight Mission, the Cherokee settlement near modern Russellville, where he sought to become editor of a planned tribal newspaper. When this did not come to pass, he relocated to Hot Springs in , where he engaged in the grocery business, served as postmaster, won election to several public offices, helped develop the whetstone industry , and became something of a land speculator. He died in May  and was buried in a small family cemetery.Whittington Avenue in Hot Springs is named for him. Students of Arkansas history owe Hiram’s younger brother Granville Whittington a special thanks, for he preserved the early letters his brother wrote back home telling of the wonders of frontier  Arkansas.Hiram himself also deserves special recognition for carefully preserving early copies of the Arkansas Gazette, which is an indispensable source for historians. Hiram’s early letters did not portend good things for this Yankee immigrant. He complained about the heat, the insects—especially ticks, partisan politics, drunkenness, and the local women. In his first letter from Arkansas Territory, he referred to “this little rock on the bank of a dirty river.” Little Rock was less than a decade old in  when Hiram wrote his brother: “The town, and I believe the whole territory,is inhabited by the dregs of Kentucky,Georgia and Louisiana, but principally from the former, and a more drunken, good for nothing set of fellows never got together.” Hiram did not find local women to his liking either, even complaining that he had to undress in front of them when he traveled and boarded with settlers: “I did not take my pantaloons off,however,until I had got between the sheets.” He found frontier women to be far too natural for his New England tastes, noting especially that “if the girls feel a tick biting them at a party,and even if they are on the floor dancing , they immediately stop and unpin and scratch themselves until they find it.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Hiram went back to Boston to find a wife, whom he married in . She died after fifteen years of marriage and the birth of six children. Hiram never remarried. With the assistance of Little Rock merchant John McLain, Whittington established a small store in Hot Springs soon after arriving. In one of his letters home,he described a lazy afternoon: “I have no customers , no official business. . . . I live here in a little cabin of logs about  feet square, with an adjoining room of about seven by nine feet. The larger room is my store. The smaller is my private apartment, sitting room, drawing room, clerk’s office, post office and bed chamber.” Though Hiram comes across as a bit fussy and critical in his early letters,over time he found Arkansas much to his liking.He built a large home in Hot Springs, which was often filled with family and friends. Intellectually curious despite his lack of formal education,Hiram compiled a large library in his home. He gave land for both the St. Mary’s Catholic Church and First Presbyterian Church in Hot Springs. By the outbreak of the Civil War in , Hiram was writing letters referring Hiram A. Whittington  to “the fanatical vandals of the North.” His son William served in the Confederate army, surviving the battles of Elk Horn Tavern, Corinth, and the losing effort to defend Atlanta. Hiram’s...