The Hogs of Madison County

Thomas Bewick: Engraving

What was life like Madison County Arkansas in 1870 and 1880, the Laird and Howerton home county?  Occasionally if you look hard you run across a scrap of information that can do a lot of talking.  This is Madison County as the assessor saw it.

Madison County counted its wealth in horses, mules, and cattle.   The big winner in sheer numbers is hogs. In 1887 the hogs of Madison County number 27,000 plus, outnumbering people by a factor of about three to one.  

Tax Assessor list Madison County from Goodspeeds History (see source below.)

Goodspeed's History of Benton, Washington, Carroll, 

Madison, Crawford, Franklin, and 

Sebastian Counties, Arkansas *

Add up all the money and outstanding credit in this rural county, and you see that livestock outweigh it by a factor of five.   Fine italian linens,  silver table service and fine art are ignored on the assessor's survey.  Perhaps this column would get more use in a more sophisticated city like Little Rock.

Still, some fancy goods are indeed represented: 43 silver and gold watches exist in Madison County... or at least are counted by the tax assessor in 1877. Ten years later the number of watches explodes to 219.   Four pianos are resident in 1882.  Economic times seem to be good in the 70’s and 80’s as the population of watches and pianos explode thru the decade. Perhaps these statistics describe the recovery after the Civil War. 

Driving seems to be as desirable then as now, carriages being on the increase.  It is likely that carriage sales increased as the county installed more drivable roads.  

If you consider hogs the 1887 currency , hogs are worth about $1.25 each. That would be around $30 in today's dollars. Using this measure a gold watch would cost about $12 (1887 dollars) or 10 hogs. But the real luxury item is not a carriage or a pianola. A mule would set you back around $50. How much is that in hogs? That would  be about 40 hogs to equal the price of a single long eared luxury item, a mule.   

Source: History of Benton, Washington, Carroll, Madison, Crawford..Counties

Howerton and Laird Migrations: Arkansas Travelers

It is still a mystery why Susan Laird named her three offspring Howerton... then later reverted to the surname Laird. We do know Howertons and Lairds lived near each other in Madison County and that these families had a number of things in common. 

Both families were new comers to Arkansas, arriving after the Arkansas Territory was declared a state in 1836.  Both families migrated west by way of Tennessee.   Both families came with kids.  Both acquired Arkansas land in Madison County and made their living by farming, as did most folks in the area. 

Howerton Migration Path: Virginia, Grainger Tennessee, Pike County Arkansas, Madison County Arkansas.

The elder William Howerton was born in Virginia in 1789. His son Ira Howerton 1813 also claimed Virginia as his birth state.  Ira and his wife Betsy Baker were residing Grainger County, Tennessee in 1840.   The 1850 census finds Ira's extended family had moved west to the town of Missouri, in Pike County, Arkansas.  Father, William Howerton 61 and six other Howerton adults live in the household, as well as eleven Howerton and Baker kids under the age of 14.

1850 Census of Pike County records no one in the Howerton clan as deaf, dumb, blind insane,
idiotic, pauper or convict. 

The next decade's census shows the Howerton gang has moved again and the family is established in Bowen Township Madison County in the north west part of the state. Documents show William Howerton bought land in this area around 1860. Ira fathered eleven kids, four kids with Betsy Baker… seven more with second wife Elizabeth Sarah Davis.  He lived to 66 and made Arkansas his last stop.

Laird Migration Path: Hardin County Tennessee, Marion County Arkansas, Madison County Arkansas.

The Lairds migrated to Arkansas about fifteen years before the Howertons. Temperance Dubose, later Laird,  married in Hardin County Tennessee in 1826, though not to Jacob Laird.  Census records say that Jacob Laird was the father of her children and that the first child was born in 1833 in Tennessee.    

Laird 1850 Census, Marion County Arkansas. Temperance recorded as person over 20 who cannot
read or write. 

We can piece together their path west by tracking the births of their kids. In the 1850 census the oldest boy William Laird 17 is listed and Nelson Laird 15 are both born in Tennessee. The next child,  Susan Laird 10 is born in Arkansas.  The census evidence tells that the Laird family migration west  happened between 1835 and 1840.  They first lived In Marion County, Arkansas.  A later record of 1860 finds them settled a few counties west in Madison county.  Jacob had Temperance had six kids together and lived the rest of their lives in Arkansas.  

Not From Around Here: War Eagle Arkansas 1850

Census 1850 War Eagle Township Arkansas

A close look at the War Eagle Township Census pages of 1860 shows the neighbors surrounding the Howertons  and the Lairds are people from from everywhere else.  Migrants all, excepting the youngest children. It appears that kids are generally the only folks born in the State of Arkansas.  The fact that Arkansas first called itself a state in 1836 could help account for this.

The Census records say the patriarch of the Laird family, Jacob Laird,  was born in Tennessee and Howerton patriarch, Ira Howerton was born in Virginia. These men were part of the wave of settlers coming west that swelled the population of Arkansas territory from about 1,000 to 200,000 in the span of fifty years.*  During the decade of the Laird / Howerton migration 1840-1850, the population of Arkansas approximately doubled from 97,000 to 200,000 plus people.  

Reading the birth place column of the 1850 census tells the origins of this flood of migrants into the Arkansas territory.  The Howertons and Lairds were surrounded by neighbors from everywhere else (but nobody born on foreign soil) including:

Tennessee

Alabama 

Arkansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Mississipi

Virginia

Georgia

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Missouri

North Carolina 
South Carolina

(*Note: Native americans don't seem to be accounted for in these numbers, however. The government policy appears to be to move them off their native lands, out of the way of the white settlers, and to push them west into the "indian territories.") 

Source: Wikipedia Arkansas Historical Population:   source