Page 108 - Arkansas Confederate Women

TWO BRAVE WOMEN.

By Mrs. J. B. Crump, of Hmrison.

There are heroines on our north Arkansas border without
laurels on their brows, and martyrs "in whose hands are no
palms" that went through physical hardships, isolation and dis-

tress and to whom our late war is as a terrible dream.

The smoke from the charred ruins of their only earthly

—habitations the terror-stricken faces of the homeless, starving
—children, are singularly confused now but the time was when

these same privations whetted the edge of their mental natures,
until their ingenuity and invention were almost unsurpassed.

Hundreds of miles from a railroad or telegraph, and men-
aced by a lawlessness that lived by terrorism to women and chil-
dren, these heroines were made self-reliant through danger and
inbued with a courage rarely equaled.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN MADE CROPS.

The cultivation of land, or a scanty living from the hills
and valleys of this border, was made through much difficulty
by women and children. It was in the spring and summer of
'64 that Mrs. Parker, (now living in Boone county, Ark.,) made

with the assistance of her little boy, a good corn crop for that
day and time. The yoke of steers with which Mrs. Parker
trudged early and late, were taken from her time and again,
but through persistent appeals to the federal officers she was
allowed to keep them until her corn was "laid by."

After days of watching and working the crop was gather-
ed and stored away in a pen (Mrs. Parker had made it herself
of rails in the woods.)

But as the scarcity of food demanded a more thorough
investigation on the part of the enemy, this noble woman dug
with her own hands a hole in which she placed a hogshead that

held twelve bushels of corn.