Some settler in the 19th century proclaimed Fayetteville "the city of seven hills." I've always wanted to get a map of the seven hills of Rome and see if there's a hill-by-hill correspondence.
In his brief history of Arkansas College (1852-1861; no direct relation to the later Arkansas College in Batesville), Nathaniel Ragland called Fayetteville "a place like Jerusalem, beautiful for situation."
Ellen Gilchrist insisted that from her first drive up here, the Ozarks drew out some ancestral memory of Scotland that just felt right. She said that Fayetteville reminded her of Seymour, Ind., and Harrisburg, Ill., the little towns where her family had lived during World War II. "People think this is the South," she said of Fayetteville in her Pryor Center interview. "This is not the South. This is the lower Midwest. A lot of Southerners live here, which gives it a Southern flavor."
When the mechanics at a Pontiac dealership helped her fix the headlights on an Isuzu truck she and her boyfriend were driving to find the source of the White River (for a magazine story in 1986), she wrote, "I love Fayetteville ... Where else will people try to save you money when they sell you something? Salespeople in Fayetteville were always doing that for me ... pointing out bargains, telling me to wait for the sale, helping me curb my extravagant Delta ways."
Not long after that trip, she moved there.
So Fayetteville is like Rome, or like Jerusalem, or like the lower Midwest, depending on who you ask. Ragland's history calls it the Athens of Arkansas. We would do well to revive that label. The good news is that dozens of students are enrolled in Greek and Latin at the University of Arkansas this fall, so classical education still has a hold at our flagship university.
There is some question about whether Arkansas College or nearby Cane Hill College was chartered first. Robert Graham, founder of Arkansas College, was born in Liverpool on Aug. 14, 1822. He "learned the art and mystery of house carpentry" in Pittsburgh, according to Ragland. He traveled to Bethany, Va., (now West Virginia) to work on the first building for Bethany College. Its leader, Alexander Campbell (a kind of renegade Presbyterian and founder of all three modern "Campbellite" denominations) suggested that Graham take classes while the weather prevented him from working outside. Graham took to formal education and graduated from Bethany on July 4, 1847.
Graham became a representative for Campbell's magazine The Millenial Harbinger and traveled to Little Rock in December 1847. On Jan. 6, 1848, he set out on horseback for Fayetteville by way of Batesville, arriving in Fayetteville on Feb. 2, 1848. Graham and his horse swam cold streams without bridges.
"The few Disciples [of Christ] and other religious people I met made for me a sweet oasis," Graham later recalled. Thomas Pollard was his first friend, "a cultured man and a perfect gentleman." Pollard, his friend James Harvey Stirman, and "their charming wives" were the nucleus of the community in Fayetteville, according to Graham.
Graham returned to Pittsburgh. Stirman, a merchant, stopped to see him on a trip to buy goods back East. In Pittsburgh Stirman "presented the call" for Graham to become the "shepherd of the flock" in Fayetteville. Graham accepted and his wife consented. With their young son, they arrived in Fayetteville in December 1848.
According to Ragland, Graham taught for a few years at the Far West Seminary at Mount Comfort in order to supplement his income; I'm uncertain about Ragland's claim because it appears that classes at the Far West Seminary never met. Perhaps Graham taught at a primary school in the Mount Comfort area (three miles northwest of Fayetteville).
In any case, Graham founded a school of his own in Fayetteville, and on Dec. 1, 1851, Fayetteville pioneer William McGarrah and his wife deeded a grove facing College Avenue from Dickson Street to Spring Street to Graham's Arkansas College. The Washington County Courthouse, its parking lot, and the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) now occupy the site.
The General Assembly of Arkansas gave Arkansas College its charter on Dec. 14, 1852. The trustees were Robert Graham, T.B. Van Horne, J.M Tibbetts, David Walker, J.H. Stirman, T.J. Pollard, Jesse Turner, Henry Wilcox, A.B. Greenwood, J.P. Morean, Samuel M. Rutherford, Absalom Fowler, E.H. English, Jabez Tanner, Seneca Sutton, Wilburn D. Reagan, and George A. Pettigrew.
The college was authorized to hire instructors, officers, and servants, and to procure "books, maps, charts, gloves, and philosophical, chemical, and other apparatus, necessary to the success of said institution."
The first class graduated on July 4, 1854: John M. Pettigrew, William H. Cravens, Elias Du Val, Robert B. Rutherford, Mark Evans, Arkansas Wilson, and John Wilson. All received B.A.s and, according to Ragland, "the diplomas handed these young men were the first ever given a graduating class in Arkansas."
Arkansas College thrived throughout the 1850s, drawing students from all over Arkansas and Indian Territory, as well as the Northeast and England.
Students withdrew in the spring of 1861 after Arkansas' secession from the Union. Confederate troops burned the main college building on March 4, 1862.