Artie (Watts) (Melton) Pfister

History of Artie Missie Watts, Melton, Pfister

The Following was written to Artie, Watts, Melton, Pfister by her sister, Sarah

Watts Pruett, on July 5th, 1962, in Marshall, Searcy County, Arkansas.

  "The generations of the Wattses:  Jack Watts came form Louisville, Kentucky.  Jack Watts was our great grandfather.  Albert Watts was our grandfather.  Our father was Henry Lafayette Watts.  Thomas Albert Watts was the fourth generation who lived in Searcy County."

  Pleasant Watts was Ben Watts' son.  Pleasant said Ben Watts put his mfamily in a boat on a flat boat in Tennessee near the Kentucky line, and went to Arkansas on the Cumberland River.  This would fit in with the trading posts in Paducca and Mayfield, Kentucky.  He must have lived near the Cumberland River in order to have travelled by river and not by wagon train.  The Cumberland River runs near the Kentucky and Tennessee line.

  Ben Watts also went on this trip.  Ben Watts was my grandfather's brother.  A brother of Ben Watts went on this trip, and could have been Albert Watts, our grandfahter.  He came from Tennessee too.  This was about the time Bennett Watts came to Arkansas.  I found him in the census records in Tennessee in 1834.  1820 was about right for when they came from Virginia into North Carolina, and on to Tennessee.  They were of Scotch and Irish descent.  There was a tradition that we were of Scotch and Irish descent."

The following was written in the handwitting of Artie Missie Watts, Melton, Pfister: "Pertaining to Watts generations form Virginia to Kentucky to Tennessee. First settlers long before the Civil War."

  "This is the beginning of my memories of my life from the time I do remember.  I was born eight miles east of Marshall, Arkansas in Searcy County, where my grandfathers were two of the first settlers of that part of the state of Arkansas.  My grandfathers' name was Thomas Albert Watts.   He came there on a raft on the Tennessee River and other rivers at the age of 17.  He settled on the farm eight miles from where the county seat of Marshall was built and near where I was born.  He was of English descent.

  My  mother's father was Albert Sooter, of French descent.  Both my grandfathers were sons of early settlers whose father's garndfahters fought in the Revolution.  Both my grandfahters fought on the Union side in the Civil War."

  "They were complelled to move their families to near Berryville, Arkansas, about 60 or 70 miles from their home near Marshall because of the Bushwackers, known as the Cantrell Gang.  They killed three of my great uncles at their families' camp ten miles from Berrybille, Ark.  The four brothers had moved their families there for reasons of their safety.  Three were on furlough and came to the camp with thier families.  My grandfather had failed to ge a furlough that time, and so was spared.  Their camp was about thirty miles from the North's Union Camp line in the edge of Missouri, at Cassville, not far from Berryville, Ark.

  The soldiers of nither side were unmerciful to the civillians.  They sometimes got separtated from their battalions and came by the families' camp.  They sometimes asked the women to cook them something to eat, and then went on to look for their batallions.  But Quantrill's Bushwackers destroyed all they could not take or eat.  They killed all possible northern soldiers, and took the stock from the helpless women.  They destroyed all the crops the women and children were trying to raise and everything they could not eat or take.  They ripped my grandmother Sooter's feather beds open and let the feathers blow away.  When my mother was seven years old, they stood over her and forced her to build a fire under their log cabin near Berryville.  When she got it to burning, they got on their hourses and rode away.  They were from the south.  After the war, the government traced them down and found all the living ones left.  They took them to Little Rock wearing balls and chins.  I don't know weather they were killed or impresoned. I never heard i f any of them ever came back."

Note: Henry Lafayette Watts, brother to Artie Watts, recalled that some of these men were hanged in the court house square, witnessed by him and a large crowd.

  "Soldiers were stationed along the Mason-Dixon Line during the worst part of the Civil War, for the protection of those living along that line.

  There was a spring ten miles from Berryville, on the main road, then east to west, which in my day was called Berryville Spring.  I have passed it many times on the bus and by car.  I drank from it when I was young, but in the last years it was condemned.  I was told this when I passed this way on the bus.  I went through Cassville, only 20-30 miles from Berryville, and stopped off the bus and ate at the only cafe there.

  My mother, Elizabeth Sooter Watts, and her father's relatives from the Berryville Spring, moved back of the north Union Lines, after the death of the great uncles, when the war was over.  My grandfather Sooter moved them all back to their old homes near Marshall, Arkansas.

  Mother married Henry Lafayette Watts when she was 16 years old.  He taught school in a little log school house on my grandfather Sooter's farm on the Leslie Road.  My father's father came from Kentucky to to Little Rock on a raft from Virginia, on the Trennessee River at the age of 17 years.  He settled three miles off the road where my Grandfather Sooter lived.  He also fought in the Union Army.  He moved back to where he had lived after the war, three miles from Grandpa Sooter.  They were two of the first settlers in Searcy County, where many Sooters and Wattses of distant kin still live.  I have gone many times to visit them until all of the oldest ones of my generation passed away.  All of the oldest were gone, except for me and my one brother, Henry Lafayette Watts II, and two or three of our cousins by 1971.

  There were five of the brothers of my grandfather Watts who homesteaded, lived and died in Searcy County, not farther than thirty miles from Marshall.  They have descendants there too.  My father studied law, surveying and abstract of title over the years.  He was county surveyor and a lawyer there.  He and my other relatives helped to build the county court house which still stands in the middle block of a square in Marshall, Arkansas.  It is made of flat limestone rock.  It is over 100 years old, or near that, at least.

  My father had a farm on what was called Big Creek, about nine miles east of Marshall, not far from the two grandfather's farms.  It had the loveliest spring on it I ever saw.  The stones were small, but most were white as snow.  The stream came from under the mountain at the edge of his field, and was a yard wide, and so cold and good.  I could never forget it.  Once when I was young and very sick, I could see it in my mind, and did so crave some of teat water.  But in all my trips, I never saw it again.  A part of the old school house remained thirty years ago.  It was of Oak  logs, seasoned, partly gone.  I visited it after being gone for firty years from that part of thee country, in the early fifties.

  My mother's father took mother and we three youngest chidren to Dade County, Missour, when I was only a few weeks old.  We lived on my Uncle Matt Sooter's place for several years, three or more.  My mother then married an old war soldier of the Civil war.  She had three children by him.  He hunted most of the time in the Arkansas-Missouri mountains.  Mother worked on the farm, raising feed, chickens and pigs, for several years.  Then she moved to Carthage, Missouri, where I went to my first real school.  I had gone with the two older children a little in Missouri, while on my grandfather's place.  While at school one day, the children were playing old fashioned long ball at noon.  One of the boys was killed when hit by a ball in the pit of his stomach.  I could never forget it.

  My mother and father had been divorced in 1885, when I was one year old.

  When I started to school in Carthage, Missouri, I was near seven years old.  My first teacher was Mrs. McClintock, a widow with one child, a little boy in my class.  I loved her so!  She taught us about Mary's Little Lamb, My Country 'Tis of Thee, and the George Washington and the Cherry Tree story.  I thought our country was the greatest of all, and I still do; but some people in high places are not great.

  My younger sister, Mable, and younger brother Will, and the youngest one, Beauford, were the Burson children.  "(Her mothers second marriage)" Beauford was weak and sickly, but very intelligent.  he read and learned how to spell aeverything that came into the house.  Though he could not go to school, he had knowledge of government systems and beliived in the Bible.  He was so kind and good natured, like my mother.  He fell through a sidewalk, a board walk, at Eureaka Springs, Arkansas, and injured his knee.  He could only walk with crutches afterward.  The doctors tried to save his leg so long that tuberculosis set in at the joint, and went to his lungs.  he died in the winter when he was twelve years old.  His leg was amputated.  He had lingered for four years.

  My mother was sick for several years.  She had been mad-dog-bitten.  They got a mad stone too late.  The effect of the poison was in her system, and she was never well again.  She never lost her mind nor her desire to do good to all people.  She lay in a coma for some time before she passed on in 1905.  She was buried near Buffalo Springs, Arkansas, at Leslie.

  I married Calvin Melton when not quite 18 years old.  I had six Melton children; Edward, Freddie Warren, named after a politician of that day.  Freddie lived for months and died at Burton Kansas.  Then Alice Ruth wa born in Burton, Kansas, or while we lived there.  She was actually born in Bellview, at the edge of Kansas City, Kansas, in 1913, the year the world war started in the old country.  When we went in, she was three years old.  Edward was born near Marshall, Ark., near where I was born.  We only lived there a short time.  I did live in Arkansas near Green Forest when I was married.  I had gone to summer school two years before at Marshall, Ark.  I met the children's father (Calvin Melton) and married him two years later, on September 2, 1902, when I went back to finish at the Academy.  At Marshall there was no high school until two or three years later, only an academy for higher studies.  Mother and Henry lived in Gereen Forest at that time, on a farm, six miles out.  Sister mary married Mack McCleary of Berryville, Ark., near the spring where my people lived during the Civil War.  His forks lived in a big hotel near the center of the square in Berryville.  Henry married Ona Hammel, and lived six miles from Green Forest Arkansas.

  Mother died near Eureka, Ark., where Sister Mary lived.  She took care of Mother until her death.  Brother Will married Lula Mitchell near Beaver City, Oklahoma, in the Beaver Strip.

  Calvin Melton and I had a homestead three miles from the Beaver River, and two miles from Mabel's husband, Vick Cramner.  Henry and Ona had seven boys.  Three are still living.  Brother Will and Sister Lula had seven children, and four are still living.

  My baby Fay was born at Leslie Arkansas in 1905.  I was unable to go to my mother's funeral because of the baby's birth.  After Faye died, the family moved to No Man's Land, in Beaver County, Oklahoma,  We proved up a homestead there and John Albert Melton was born there on February 17, 1908.

  In 1911 we sold out there and went to Greenburg.  Brother Henry came there to build a house for us.  I ran a restaurant and paid him to build a house at $3 per day.  This is the house in the picture with the children and the dog.  It (the dog) was later poisoned.

  In 1911, Freddy Alpha Warren was born in Kansas City.  We lived across the street from a teacher, Mrs. Osborn, who was a very dear friend to me."