Remembering Ella: A 1912 Murder and Mystery in the Arkansas Ozarks by Nita Gould (review)

On November 21, 1912, eighteen-year-old Ella Barham was raped, murdered, and dismembered not far from her home in Pleasant Ridge, Arkansas. She was traveling on a commonly used road near several houses when she was attacked in the middle of the day. Her disappearance sparked a quick and chaotic search, and the discovery of her body ignited a thirst for vengeance beyond justice that rocked that corner of the Ozarks. Authorities arrested two brothers who lived close to the crime scene, and they tried and executed the elder, Odus Davidson. All the evidence against Davidson was circumstantial, which leads some even now to wonder if the right person paid for the crime.

Nita Gould took up the project because of a family connection. Barham was her first cousin, twice removed. Gould recognized that the scars from the family’s loss were still visible a century later, as some family members still refused to discuss it. Conflicting accounts by relatives and area residents spurred her to research and write the book. Despite her obvious passion for the topic, Gould keeps a reasoned tone throughout, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions from the available information.

The author indicates that the book is the result of a fifteen-year project. Such a long project can be both good and bad. On the plus side, the quality and sheer quantity of her research are impressive. Gould points out that she is not a professional historian, but I have seen few local histories that show the same level of competence in research and analysis of local primary sources. As a reader, when I ask myself, “But what about . . . ?,” this book is always ready with an explanation. The author traces the backstories and post-trial lives of the major and many of the minor players connected to the story. The sensational nature of the murder all but guaranteed that the crime and subsequent trial would figure prominently in local folklore. Gould deftly identifies where local traditions conflict with verifiable fact and frequently explains the source of the offending traditions.

Such long projects can be bad because over the years authors can accumulate an incredible number of sources, some of which one becomes attached to despite their peripheral relevance to the topic. There are some things in the book that seem to fit in that category. The letters that Ella’s mother, Delilah Barham, received from sympathetic women add little to the narrative. These letters are reprinted whole in the book, but they interrupt the flow of the account of the trial. An appendix recounts the history of Zinc, Arkansas, the “Joplin of North Arkansas,” which is only tangentially related to Barham’s murder and the trial’s aftermath (p. 347). The opening chapters that contextualize life in the Ozarks seem excessive, but readers who are less familiar with the era may appreciate the detail.

Remembering Ella: A 1912 Murder and Mystery in the Arkansas Ozarks is a solid account of a terrible event. But it is also a valuable snapshot of life in the Ozarks in the early twentieth century and of Arkansas’s state legal system. It is a valuable addition to the history of the Natural State.