Now & Then: Early communities had colleges even in 1800s

— Quite a number of towns around Arkansas hold community festivals in the summer or fall each year, including our own Pea Ridge Community Fair, Prairie Grove’s annual observance of the anniversary of the Civil War Battle of Prairie Grove, Cane Hill’s Harvest Festival and the Pea Ridge Mule Jump. In northeast Arkansas, towns like Piggott, Pollard and Corning use annual festivals to raise funds supporting their cemeteries. We don’t do that in northwest Arkansas, but the festivals strengthen the community’s identity, celebrate their heritage and awareness of it, and attract homecomers and visiting tourists.

The 26th annual Cane Hill Harvest Festival is being celebrated this fall on Sept. 15 and 16. I’m trying to keep the schedule clear so as to attend their doings for at least one of those days. Of course, by the time you are reading this, the Cane Hill Festival for thisyear will be over and past.

Our Pea Ridge Community Fair has been observed longer, having begun with the Pea Ridge Centennial in 1950, but both our festival and that of Cane Hill harks back to the time when our part of the world was first being settled by white settlers coming by wagon train from the eastern U.S.;

that time between 1828 and the 1870s when the earliest towns in Benton and Washington counties were taking shape, and villages, churches, schools, lodges and other basic local institutions were being established. Pea Ridge and Cane Hill share a history of hosting two of the earliest colleges to be founded in this part of the world.

The Cane Hill College came first, being foundedin 1834 by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. It was the first collegiate institution of learning established in Arkansas, and the earliest founded west of the Mississippi River.

Our Pea Ridge College was formed after the Civil War, taking shape between 1874 and 1887. Both communities shared a history of eventually seeing their colleges moving away or being closed, and both communities have probably shared a feeling of being bypassed by history as other younger towns and cities outgrew them in size and prominence in northwest Arkansas. But both towns can be credited with powerful contributions to the development of schools and institutions of higher learning in our area, especially as they trained teachers who would establish and lead schools in communities large and small.

The village of Cane Hill is located on ArkansasHwy. 45 near Lincoln in Washington County, four miles south from the State Hwy. 45 junction with U.S.

Hwy. 62 between Prairie Grove and Lincoln. As happened with Pea Ridge, the main roads and railroads, business and commerce, developed elsewhere, so the prominent beginnings at Cane Hill faded with time. Interestingly, prominent beginnings, though faded over time, may become resurgent, as we are seeing in Pea Ridge in recent years. The old Cane Hill College building still stands today on the west hill above the little town, and the annual Cane Hill Festival takes place on the old school grounds. A part of the building houses the Cane Hill Museum, a very interesting visit.

Funds raised by the festival help maintain the building and support the museum.

The Cane Hill College itself moved many years ago to Clarksville, Ark., and today is known as theUniversity of the Ozarks.

Of course our Pea Ridge College was closed in 1916, and the school grounds in downtown Pea Ridge became the property of the Pea Ridge Public School.

The old Pea Ridge College building was dismantled and replaced in 1930.

Today’s Pea Ridge Intermediate School occupies a portion of the original old college campus.

On an earlier visit to the Cane Hill Museum, I discovered a picture taken in the late 1800s, when the Cane Hill College was hosting a conference of area educators. Among the attendees pictured was our own Miss Nanny Roberts, our original Pea Ridge Academy children’s teacher, whose teaching career in our community spanned some 50 years, both in the Academy and in the public school. Miss Nanny headed up the Primary Department of Pea Ridge Schools from 1874 to 1926. I hope to obtain a copy of thatpicture to display at our Pea Ridge School Heritage Center downtown.

These two great old colleges, now long gone, speak volumes about the pioneering citizens who settled our area in the mid-1800s. Those settlers were certainly a hardy and tough people, but they were not a rough, unlettered people. They came as a progressive people determined to establish schools, churches, lodges and other frameworks of strong community life. We owe them much. From what they began, later generations and ourselves have been able to push ahead with continuing new opportunities.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 09/19/2012