Clover Family Research Compendium
Created, Edited, and Maintained By June Clover Byrne
Arkansas Land Records
On this page
Clark County Arkansas Deed Records
Bureau of Land Management Records in Arkansas
Miscellaneous Land Records
Clark County, Arkansas Deed Records
I am including these here because they are important. There may be errors here because I was reading a poor quality film which was only an index to the deed records. I suggest that interested parties should look at the actual records. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has copies of the actual records. I am very grateful for having recently received a copy of the 1819 Bill of Sale because it is the earliest record of a Clover in Arkansas
Clark County, Arkansas Deed Record Index to 1858 extracted from FHL 1010001
[Note: The copy of the microfilm that I was working from was not very good and I have only part of the legal descriptions.]
A: 9 recorded 10 May 1819, signed 26 March 1819, John Clover, Hamblen Freeman, Bill of Sale for Improvement and Personal Property on Bayou Degray. [See copy of original deed. Thanks to Sue Clover for contributing this. It is a fascinating page. Note that they say they were residents of the Territory of Missouri. Clark County had been in the Territory of Missouri before Arkansas was formed in 1819. So this explains that comment. ] **See note below on DeGray Bayou
F: 524, dated 3 December 1847, recorded 28 January 1848 Jacob Wayfield to William H. Clover [legal description] NW 1/4 of the NW 1/4 Section 21 2T 20R
G: 28 filed 24 June 1849, dated 30 January 1849, Mortgage William H. Clover to Ben J. Duncan Section 21 NW 1/4 of the NW 1/4
G: 215, dated 31 January 1850 William H. Clover to Allen Townsend. [legal description] NE 1/4 NW 1/4 21 Section 8T 20R
J: 79 dated 19 February 1856, recorded 6 August 1856, William H. Clover to Joel Stayton, Section 21 Twp 8 R 20 [note: quarters illegible]
J-598 dated 25 January 1858, recorded 15 February 1858, Stephen L. Clover to Thomas Meniad deed SW1/4 and NW Section 32 6T 22R
There are a number of later transactions in index.
**DeGray Bayou Information. I am including this here because a large number of people have looked for Clovers in Clark County without any success. I believe that whatever tombstones had survived were either buried by the lake or moved to another location. I have been trying to find out exactly where DeGray Bayou is. I suspect that this area is under what is now DeGray Dam and Lake. According to the park service, the current DeGray Lake and Dam are in Clark County, Arkansas between Hot Springs and Arkadelphia. It is a 13,800-acre lake with state park, popular for fishing, camping, swimming, skiing, and diving. The Dam was built inn the late 1970s amid a fierce debate over the environmental impact. Only recently has the Corps of Engineers begun to talk candidly about the ecological debate and some unpopular decisions surrounding the construction of the dam.
DeGRAY
LAKE RESORT STATE PARK - SW Arkansas
190 miles NE of Minden, Louisiana
85 miles W of Pine Bluff, Arkansas
77 miles SE of Little Rock, Arkansas
148 miles SW of Fort Smith, Arkansas
159 miles WSW of Idabel, Oklahoma
degray@arkansas.com
___________________________________________________________
In 1818, the Territorial Legislature of Missouri named Clark in
southwest Arkansas as one of the first counties. It was named for
William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory. The Caddo, Little
Missouri and Ouachita rivers flow through the county. The first county
seat was at the home of Jacob Barkman until 1825 when it was moved to
Biscoeville. In 1827, the government moved to Adam Stroud's home and
then to Greenville in 1830 before settling at Arkadelphia in 1842.
Settlement in Clark County began as early as 1811. Arkadelphia and
Gurdon are its largest town. Each year, thousands of visitors arrive to
visit Lake DeGray State Park and students attend the two universities,
Henderson State and Ouachita Baptist. Amity, Arkadelphia and Gurdon are
among its major communities.
____________________________________________________________
http://www.historystateparks.com/
_____________________________________________________________
Degray Lake
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
729 Channel Road
Arkadelphia, AR 71923-9361
Phone: (870) 246-5501
http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Lakes/DegrayLake/main.php
____________________________________________________________
DEGRAY.---"De
gres (sandstone). The stream of this name is noted for the soft, easily
cut, sandstone along its course.... The original land plat, surveyed in
1819, calls it 'Bayou Degraff', however, and it may be that it comes
from a personal name.... Stream in Clark county."
A lake formed by
impounding the Caddo River and a state park now carry this name. The
Dunbar and Hunter expedition near Bayou du Cypre met a party headed by
an old German named Paltz who had been on the Ouachita forty years
(34).
____________________
32.
Morris S. Arnold and Dorothy Jones Core, Arkansas Colonials: A
Collection of French and Spanish Records Listing Early Europeans in
Arkansas, 1686-1804 (Gillett, 1986), 39.
33. John Francis
McDermott, ed., "The Western Journals of Dr. George Hunter, 1796-1805,"
American Philosophical Society Transactions, New Series, LIII, Pt. 4
(1963), 98.
34. McDermott, "The Western Journals,"
98.
Bureau of Land Management Records
United States Bureau of Land Management has the Arkansas Land Patents on line at: http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/ The following Clover patents were found there dated prior to 1900. I did not reproduce those after 1900. I am primarily interested in these because it tells us where people were on various dates. You will find a complete legal description on the Governement Land Office site. Thye new site has the ability to map the locating of the land which is awesome. Numbers at the end are township/range numbers which locate the land.
16 August 1838, William Clover of Independence County, Arkansas purchased 240 acres in Randolph County, Arkansas, at the land office at Batesville, Arkansas. [Randolph County is in the NE corner of Arkansas on the Missouri border.]
1 May 1856, William Clover of Clark County, Arkansas purchased 160 acres in Clark County, Arkansas at the land office at Washington. 8S 21W
1 December 1857, Stephen L. Clover of Clark County, Arkansas purchased 200 acres in Clark County, Arkansas at the land office at Washington. 6S 22W
2 April 1860, Stephen L. Clover of Clark County, Arkansas purchased 40 acres in Clark County at the land office in Washington. 6S 22W
10 December 1874 William H. Clover Clark County, Arkansas no. 9035. 120 acres in Clark County at the land office in Washington. 8S 21W
Later purchases:
Hattie E. Clover, widow of William G. Clover, Scott County, Arkansas 4 June 1906 no. 8061 40 acres
John R. Clover, Polk County, Arkansas, 14 May 1909 no. 0350 161 27/100 acres
Miscellaneous Land Records
Fern Ainsworth, Private Land Claims, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, (Natchitoches, Louisiana: F. Ainsworth, 1978). There were no Clovers in this book. The title page states that the book is a record of private land claims from the National Archives Record Center in Suitland, Maryland. They were a mine of genealogical material, but a headache for the government because of the litigation.
Return
to Home Page
Copyright 2006 June Clover Byrne
Page
last updated 10 April 2010
Contact
me at junebyr@yahoo.com
s