Thomas Johnston Erwin

by Donald D. Erwin

Thomas and Nancy Erwin arrived in Carroll County, Arkansas in 1848, and as near as can be determined, were the first of our line to do so. With them were their children: Elizabeth Rebecca, who was two, and James, who was an infant.

Today’s Carroll County is about thirty-five miles wide east to west, and extends about thirty miles south to north, less a big chunk out of the southwest corner. It is in the northwest corner of Arkansas, bordering on the Missouri line, and is the second county east from Oklahoma. Benton County is between Carroll County and Oklahoma. Bentonville, a small town in Benton County, is the unlikely location of the corporate headquarters of Walmart, the largest retailer in the world.

Carroll County is in a region known as the Ozarks, which is a roughly two-hundred-mile-square area in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. It is bounded by the Missouri River on the north, the Arkansas River on the south, the Mississippi River on the east, and the Great Plains on the west. Geologically it differs from the flat sur­rounding lands, being an ancient upraised plateau, which has eroded for over fifty million years to form the present landscape of hills and valleys, with some grassland that is resistant to erosion.

In Indian times, before 1800, the area was heavily forested with oak and hickory and some pine. The forest cover, on top of limestone and dolomite rock formations, created abundant springs which fed many small rocky-bottomed creeks and rivers. Bass, perch, catfish, carp, and other fish filled the streams, while deer, bear, panther, turkey, quail, coon, possum, muskrat, and other fur-bearing animals lived in the wooded hills along the streams. Though much of the forest is gone, the Ozarks is still a beautiful region of wooded hills, open prairies, and rich bottomland.

The settlers arriving in Arkansas and Missouri, after 1803, were mostly native-born Americans. In the early years they had come from states adjacent to Missouri on the east. Colonel Morgan’s colony from Kentucky, which settled New Madrid, Missouri in 1788, was the first distinctly Ameri­can settlement. Generally speaking, the early-arriving Americans came from western Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as southern Illinois. As time passed and the frontier pushed west, settlers began coming from the Appalachians proper as well as from areas to the north and east of the Appalachians. Some went west from Philadelphia and followed the Ohio Valley to Missouri. Others turned south at Philadelphia and followed the Great Valley Road down through Virginia to the Carolinas, and then eventually west. In western Virginia settlers could pass through one of the few gaps in the Appalachians, known as the Cumberland Gap. Once through the Gap settlers could follow either the Cum­berland or the Tennessee River on their journey west. Both are tributary to the Ohio, and thus these settlers connected with those coming down the Ohio from Pittsburgh.

The settlement of northwest Arkansas started in earnest during the early 1830s. The first group of settlers was comprised largely of veterans of the War of 1812. They came with government land certificates, given to them for war service.  Others sought free homesteading land, or to re-establish family ties with relatives who had preceded them. Regardless of their individual reasons, they all came to settle, to tame the wilderness and to establish a style of living that was better than what they had experienced before. It took a special breed of individuals to tackle the frontier, and they all tended to be experienced and resourceful frontiersmen who knew how to cope with frontier dangers and inconveniences.

The majority of the inhabitants of the area at that time were of Scots-Irish descent. They were much like the newcomers, a self-sufficient and hardy group engaged primarily in subsistence farming. There would have been a few professional men, and preachers, but they were all poor and living under the same primitive conditions.

Thomas Johnston Erwin, my great-grandfather, was the third child of Joseph & Rebecca Erwin. He was born November 15, 1822, in Tennessee, probably near Pulaski in Giles County, and died April 24, 1892, in Green Forest, Carroll County, Arkansas. He married Nancy Caroline Mathis February 5, 1845, in Henry County, Tennessee, probably in Paris, the county seat. She was the daughter of James Mathis and Sally Jones, and was born in 1828, in Tennessee. Their children were:

  1. Elizabeth Rebecca Erwin, b. November 24, 1846 in Henry Co., TN
  2. James Erwin, born in 1847in Tennessee.
  3. Margaret Mary Erwin, b. November 1849 in Carroll Co., AR
  4. Laura Alice Erwin, b. March 12, 1856 in Green Forest, Carroll Co., AR
  5. Joseph Johnson Erwin, b. July 29, 1858in Green Forest, Carroll Co., AR
  6. Harriett Avarilla (Hattie) Erwin, b. January 30, 1860 in Denver, Carroll Co., AR
  7. William Coleman (Cole) Erwin, b. February 12, 1862 in Green Forest, Carroll Co., AR
  8. Michael Ransallaer (Mike) Erwin, b. August 4, 1867 in Carrolton, Carroll Co., AR

Thomas and Nancy lived first in Carrollton, but later homesteaded on Dry Creek near the small thriving community of Denver. They lived for a time in Eureka Springs, but in later years returned to their farm. They lived the rest of their lives in Carroll County, and had six more children. Thomas and Nancy Erwin, as well as many of their descendants, are buried in the Denver Cemetery.

It is thought that it was about 1853, that Joseph Erwin, Jr. and Nancy Rebecca Davis Erwin, with several of their children, followed Thomas and Nancy Erwin to Carroll County. The 1850 census lists them near Paris in Henry County, Tennessee. The 1960 census has them in Carroll County, Arkansas.