Early Settlers

Early settlers came by boat, covered wagon, and their own two feet in the 1800s. They faced many hardships on a bone-weary journey. And that was before they began the strenuous work of hacking out a living in the swamps and forests of what became North Little Rock.

Disease and injury were ever present.

Among the earliest to establish roots were French and Quapaw descendants who built plantations on the Arkansas River bottomlands at what became Rose City and downriver.

Homesteaders William Mabbett, John Bevil, George Stewart, and John Hynam Sr. had arrived about 1812. Others included Joseph Bartholomew, Francis Imbeau, John Imbeau Sr., Francis Coussatt, and Joseph Duchassin, all of French-Quapaw descent.

By 1814 an enterprising American, Wright Daniel, was living at the foot of Big Rock Mountain. He eventually opened a ferry service and a stage coach line. Edmund Hogan established a ferry service about 1820 to shuttle travelers from the north side of the Arkansas River to the new settlement of Little Rock. At least one road house offered hospitality to those waiting to cross. Other ferries plied the river upstream and down. A second ferry in 1832 opposite Little Rock was operated by David Rorer.

Emsley and Charlotte Shillcutt bought several hundred acres of farmland and woods along what is known as Shillcutt’s Bayou below Big Rock Mountain in 1847. A few years later, German immigrant John Christian Heilman salvaged lumber in 1850 from the former home of James Miller, the first territorial governor of Arkansas.

Heilman floated the logs down the Arkansas River to the mouth of White Oak Bayou. From there he hauled his cargo about five miles overland to his homestead where he built a log cabin and store at what is now Crystal Hill Road and Highway 365. His descendants in 1976 donated the cabin to the city, plus $1,000 to move and reassemble it in Burns Park.

In the 1850s and 1860s, as people came through in covered wagons, a couple of hotels took root near the river. Historians have identified the Pulaski House. Although unverified, some accounts mention the Argenta Hotel, which burned.

Argenta as a name for the north side appeared in an 1866 township survey and plat filed in 1871.

Huntersville was a small settlement clustered around the railroad facilities on the north side of the Arkansas River opposite Little Rock during the Civil War. The origin of the name of Huntersville is unknown, but that has not deterred local historians from offering opinions. There is, however, agreement on the location of Huntersville, which appeared on a map of Arkansas in 1871, a year before the settlement burned to the ground. Huntersville occupied the river front between what is today the Junction Bridge and the Rock Island Bridge.

Floods and swamps were always a deterrent to starting a settlement on the river’s north shore until the railroads came. Two ferry terminals – the earliest established in 1818 – and a road house were the closest thing to a town prior to the early 1860s when the Memphis and Little Rock Railway built a depot and shops at the terminus of its Western Division Line, which was completed in January 1862. It linked DeValls Bluff on the White River with the north shore across the river from the Point of Rocks, from which Little Rock derived its name. At the time, only pontoon bridges spanned the river, so train passengers would have to take a ferry boat to Little Rock.

With the Civil War underway, the Confederate Army took over the Memphis and Little Rock facilities to transport troops. But in September 1863, the Union Army captured the railroad facilities along with Little Rock. The U.S. Army built a machine shop, roundhouse, warehouses, mess houses and corrals on the north shore. A photograph taken during the Union occupation shows the Star Saloon and Coffee Stand and some warehouses along railroad tracks. Two maps of the same period also provide evidence of the settlement, although the name of Huntersville does not appear on either one. The first map, titled “Approaches to Little Rock” by Captain T.J. Mackey, a Confederate engineer, was dated August 1863 and shows a depot at the end of the line. The second map, titled “North Side of Arkansas River Opposite Little Rock” was prepared by the Union Army on Dec. 22, 1864, to show the railroad facilities.

Another map, a Bird’s Eye View of Little Rock in 1871, also shows the railroad on the north side, but makes no mention of Huntersville. Notwithstanding those three maps, the name of Huntersville does appear on the 1871 map of Arkansas. It also appeared in the diary of a Union soldier dated Sept. 4, 1864, and in newspaper accounts, newspaper ads and railroad timetables, all dating from 1865 to 1872. Although the evidence is weaker, some writers think the origin of the name goes back to the 1820s because early maps identified the north shore as “Hunters” or “French Hunters” Game was plentiful then and unsubstantiated stories circulated later told of a hunting club that could be reached from a Huntersville Landing or a Huntersville Ferry Station, around which settlers operated a blacksmith shop, a store, warehouses, a wagon shop and stables.

While the early stories have a certain romantic plausibility to explain the origin of the name of Huntersville, the better evidence comes from the mid-to late 1860s. Indeed, the name may derive from William Hunter, who was the railroad superintendent for the Union Army when Huntersville first appeared in print. The North Little Rock Times provided an anecdotal account in one of its “Looking Back” columns in September 1944 that featured a 1904 interview of a man named D.D. Chapman, who was 65 years-old. Chapman, who said he settled on the north side in 1864, recalled that the name of Huntersville came from a Dr. Hunter, a Methodist preacher.

The union turned the railroad facilities back over to the Memphis and Little Rock Railway in August 1865. On Dec. 22, 1865, the Arkansas Gazette advertised a public auction by the U.S. Army quartermaster to sell off government buildings on land belonging to Mr. Duff of Huntersville. A few years later, the Gazette wrote on March 22, 1871, that Huntersville was the terminus of three railroads, including “depots, boarding houses, groceries, saloons and blacksmith shops.” But within a month, on April 14, the Gazette wrote: “At Huntersville there now remains but one or two of the old government buildings and perhaps a shanty or two. The former population has gone, and its ancient military and business renown faded into the things that were.” The article went on to insist that Argenta was the proper name of the north shore. Argenta, platted by the heirs of Thomas W. Newton Sr. in 1866, began in 1871 and grew up to become the City of North Little Rock. Huntersville became a memory. A fire on May 9, 1872, destroyed its remnants. The Gazette noted the next day: “What was left of the war village of Huntersville, opposite this city – the former terminus of the Memphis road – consisting of two or three cabins, was consumed by fire yesterday morning. Thus was consumed the last vestige of a once flourishing town.”
–Cary Bradburn