It takes some imagination today to visualize life in a community without cars or trucks. We have become accustomed to jumping in a vehicle and driving 10 or 20 miles with hardly a thought. It is sometimes sobering to me to recall that for just a few generations before us, there were no cars for running to the store, or running to church, or running anywhere. To go somewhere, even to get to the train, you would walk, or hitch the horse to a buggy, or take a wagon and team, or saddle a horse for the ride.
In the mid-1800s, when the communities in our part of the world were being formed by settlers from Tennessee and the Carolinas and Georgia, small community gathering places were much more numerous than we now see. Churches, school houses and stores were often established within three to five miles of the families they intendedto serve. Otherwise, people would have difficulty traveling the distance necessary for gatherings. As settlement on Pea Ridge progressed, from 1830 to the 1850s, Buttram’s Chapel became an early prominent and influential gathering place, and wielded a major influence in shaping the town of Pea Ridge.
Living on farms south and east of Pea Ridge, the Buttram and Miser families became leading families in the area, and especially Elijah Buttram, an early farmer and minister of the gospel. Interestingly, before the Civil War, there were no churches within the village of Pea Ridge. The early churches were located in the outlying communities. In the mid-1850s, the Masonic Lodge, and supportive families southeast of Pea Ridge, erected the first building to be known as Buttram’s Chapel. It was a two-story frame building, located near the center of today’s Buttram’s Chapel Cemetery, with the front door facing east.
In the beginning, the cemetery was to the west end of the property, behind the chapel. In the upper story was the Masonic Lodge meeting hall.
A separate entry and stairs at the west rear gave access to the upper floor. The downstairs was initially a place for church services, led by the Rev. Buttram, a Methodist preacher. Quite often, in that day, a building of this type would be a community’s first building for public gatherings. The Masons were a very strong and influential organization in that period, very supportive of good communitylife and education in a time when educational institutions were still few and far between.
In the early 1870s, not long after the close of the Civil War, the Rev. Elijah Buttram, his church people, the Masonic Lodge, and other leaders became acquainted with Professor John Raines Roberts, a young college-trained educator from Missouri, who was interested in establishing a school in the Pea Ridge area. There being no suitable buildings in Pea Ridge, the Buttram’s Chapel people made their building available, and in 1874, the Pea Ridge Academy was opened for school. Professor Roberts brought in his younger sister, Miss Nancy Roberts, to teach the younger five grades, and he himself taught the older grades. Nancy Roberts became known as Miss Nanny by her devoted students and friends. She wouldeventually spend more than 50 years teaching young children in the Pea Ridge area.
For its first five years, the new Pea Ridge Academy held classes at Buttram’s Chapel. In 1879, Professor Roberts purchased 15 acres in downtown Pea Ridge, and began constructing a two-story brick schoolhouse. In the 1870s, the street now known as Davis Street had become a major north-south street in town.
The Sugar Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church had moved there from the country south of Pea Ridge to become the Pea Ridge Presbyterian Church. The Hileman Chapel Methodist Church, initially located a mile west of Pea Ridge, would relocate to the eastside street in 1907. Professor Roberts, who was also a Christian minister, and his father, the Rev. Joseph Roberts, founded the Pea Ridge Christian Church atthe far north end of our Davis Street. The new school house for the Pea Ridge Academy was erected on the east side of the school grounds, facing to the east, near the trees which stand today in front of the Pea Ridge Intermediate School.
The Academy held no classes for the 1879-1880 school year, but opened school in the new building in Pea Ridge in the Fall of 1880. It would go on to become the highly respected Pea Ridge College in 1887 and later, expanding the facilities to serve up to 250 students.
(To be continued.)◊◊◊
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 03/06/2013