An Opinion of Arkansas After Three Years’ Trial.
J. M. Sowle, Dryden, Ark.—I came here from Michigan in June, 1890. Located at a place now called Dryden, just west of Gilkerson on the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, with seventeen families and a few single men; seventy in all. The B. & S. W. Railroad now runs through our town.
Two families returned to stay; three more got lonesome here in the woods and went back expecting to stay, and before they were back two months acknowledged that they were homesick to come back and did come back, as they liked the society here, as well as the fine weather and good health. Everyone here now are here to stay, and most of them have bought land.
We have such nice warm sunshine and weather in the winter. Health best of any place we were ever located. Out of the seventy people in the three years and eight months, have had eight persons sick enough to go to bed. One two-year-old girl died; another three-months-old babe died; she was well at midnight, found dead in bed in the morning; and one woman fifty years old died with consumption, think hereditary, as her father, mother and five brothers and sisters died with the same disease. The three who died are counted in the eight sick, except the babe.
The soil here is good and never fails to raise crops on account of drouth or any other cause. We have raised fifty bushels shelled corn to the acre on our poorest land, and a bushel of potatoes to twenty-four hills, and in fact nearly all kind of crops are extra good. The county is naturally suited to peaches, plums and grapes. General good crops are corn, cotton, wheat, oats, timothy, clover, red top, blue grass, blackberries, raspberries, apples, pears and quince.
Society is good; more church members in proportion to population than any place I ever was in. Laws are enforced here better than any place I ever lived.
This county is a peaceful and safe county to live in, as we have the best of accommodating neighbors, as well as law-abiding citizens.