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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Poinsett County, Arkansas.
Official Website
Poinsett County was formed on February 28, 1838, and named for Joel Roberts Poinsett, U.S. Secretary of War.
The Civil War devastated the county financially. It did not recover until the railroads were constructed into the area, giving farmers a new avenue to market their crops, and the timber industry developed. The Texas and St. Louis Railway Company completed track through Weiner and the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railway ran through the center of the county in 1882. The Kansas City, Ft. Scott, and Gulf Railroad opened service in east Poinsett County the following year. Shipping timber had become feasible and was undertaken throughout northeast Arkansas following the completion of railroads. Farmers used the railroads to ship their cotton and farm animals to new markets. Many small railroad towns boomed during this period. Despite this uplift, the county's population mostly consisted of poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers, with an elite class of white landowners.
Poinsett County was the hardest hit county by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which flooded thousands of fields and destroyed homes countywide. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was founded in 1935 in Tyronza during the Great Depression. The organization was an interracial union to improve the pay and working conditions of poor sharecroppers. It met violent resistance from white planters, with union leaders and members attacked and some killed throughout its areas of organizing in Arkansas and Mississippi.
Adjacent Counties
Cities, Towns, Townships & Communities
- Boliver
- Dobson
- Fisher
- Greenfield
- Greenwood
- Harrisburg (County Seat)
- Lepanto
- Little River
- Lunsford
- Marked Tree
- Owen
- Rivervale
- Scott
- Trumann
- Tyronza
- Weiner
- West Prairie
- Willis
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