Hearne History - Page 423

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quite worthy of being the governor of the State of Arkansas. We visited all the places of interest whilst there -- too many to enumerate.

My brother’s family being Episcopalians, we attended church with them on Sunday nights, but at the morning services each sabbath, we went and worshiped with the congregation of the Second Baptist Church, of which Dr. A. B. Miller is pastor. I had known Brother Miller in gone-by days (he having been for seven years pastor in Versailles, Ky.), and he at once made us feel at home and as one of his noble people and church; during the week I spent many hours with him at his study in social converse, as also with his charming family at their home.

We also took a run forty miles south on the Iron Mountain Railroad to Wyandotte, a settlement of one hundred and fifty persons, eighty of whom are employees of the Hearne Lumber Company, and the rest their families. Here is the saw and planing mill of the lumber company, who own and operate the entire business, grocery store, post-office, and mills. They also own a narrow-gauge logging railroad five miles in length, out through the center of their dense pine forest, that supplies the logs for the mill. We spent two days and a night here, with pleasure and instruction, taking a ride out on the log-cars to the other settlement, where the logs are cut and loaded on the cars, the drawing up to the road being done by Arkansas oxen.

This forest is indeed a splendid sight, the tall and stately pines, many of them being three and a half feet in diameter, and eighty feet to a limb.

In less than an hour the six cars were loaded with sixty logs, and we, seated on top of them, were steaming away back to the mill, which was quickly reached, and in ten minutes the logs were all unloaded and some of them on the trucks, moving up to the saw, where they were quickly made into lumber, and moved on hand-cars to the drying kiln, thence to the planing mill, and thence to the car for shipment, principally to Kansas, at the rate of twenty-five thousand feet daily.

On Monday morning, Feb. 13, with feelings of deep regret and the most kindly remembrances, we bid adieu to loved kindred and friends in Little Rock, and sped away forty-six miles south on the Iron Mountain Railroad to Malvern, thence west twenty-two miles

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Copyright (c) 1999, 2007 Brian Cragun.