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

Dr. Charles McDermott

Dr. Charles McDermott Dr. Charles McDermott was one of those amazing Americans of the nineteenth century who could do just about anything. A prominent physician,founder of the town of Dermott,plantation owner,inventor, and tinkerer extraordinaire, McDermott was above all a visionary and dreamer. Had McDermott lived to witness the flight of the Wright brothers in , most likely he would have cheered loudly—and then, perhaps, muttered to himself, “I could have done that.” McDermott was born in southeastern Louisiana in , a mere five years after the area became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. He was born into the wealthy landowning family of Patrick and Emily Ozan McDermott, his mother a member of the local French-speaking population. As was the case with most male offspring of the local aristocracy, young “Charlie” was sent to private boarding schools, and he eventually took a degree in what we would call mechanical engineering from Yale.While at Yale he converted to Presbyterianism under the tutelage of famed theologian Lyman Beecher. The twenty-year-old Charles decided to study medicine under Dr. Henry Baines, his brother-in-law and a distinguished graduate of a London medical school. After four years of this study (and practicing on the family’s slaves), Charles “made a place for himself as a successfully practicing physician,” to quote McDermott’s biographer, Robert Diffee. For unclear reasons, perhaps involving family jealousies and intrigue, about  Dr. McDermott and his brother Edward relocated to southeastern Arkansas, establishing a flourishing farm on Bayou Bartholomew in what is now extreme northwestern Chicot County. McDermott was fascinated by the wildlife,boasting of one bear hunt in which three bears were killed—along with wolves, deer, turkey, and foxes. The brothers bought as much land as they could get, gradually building vast holdings along Bayou Bartholomew. Until   McDermott apparently lived mostly in Louisiana near his mother while his brother managed the Arkansas farms. “It was a poor log house I moved into,” McDermott wrote years later in a brief memoir, “but within a few years I had paid off my debts and increased my properties.” McDermott’s wife, Miss Hettie Smith, was reputed to have been a relative of the future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. When the Civil War drew near, McDermott became an ardent secessionist . He especially opposed granting citizenship and other rights to African Americans. After the war, an embittered McDermott promoted unsuccessful attempts to establish colonies of ex-Confederates in Central America. Ultimately,McDermott returned to his large home,and the settlement that grew up around it was named Dermott in his honor. As the years passed, the doctor spent a goodly amount of his time inventing. He patented a cotton-picking machine (nothing ever came of it) as well as a more successful iron wedge. But, it was his flying machine that earned him a footnote in American aviation history. On November , , the U.S. Patent Office granted patent , for McDermott’s flying machine, which is believed to be the first American patent for a heavier-than-air flying machine. Its inventor called it an “Improvement in Apparatus for Navigating the Air.” Apparently McDermott had experimented with flight since he was a child. He had studied aerodynamics, the lifting capacity of wind, and wing design, but the available steam power of the day did not allow for motive power, or “horizontal propulsion,” as the Doctor called it. Dr.McDermott’s flying machine was unveiled at the  Southeast Arkansas Fair in Monticello. From there it was well received at the state fair, and then it was included in the Arkansas exhibition at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in . The McDermott machine was an odd-looking creation, with eleven fixed wings, all mounted one atop the other, the large propeller powered by the pilot’s peddling. I could locate no evidence that the model ever flew, although there are references to repeated attempts. As late as ,only two years before his death,McDermott was quoted as hoping “to give a flying chariot to every poor woman,far better than Queen Victoria ever rode in.” A replica of McDermott’s machine, based on the drawings filed  EDUCATION, SCIENCE, AND MEDICINE with the patent application, can be seen at the Arkansas Aviation Education Center on East Roosevelt Road, near the Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Atkinson, James H., ed. “A...