Fifteen year old Elta McElroy came to Newton County in covered wagons with her parents, Marshall and Anna McElroy and her two brothers Ted and Russell in 1915. Her father homesteaded 120 acres near Highway Seven on the Jasper mountain at McElroy Gap. Elta McElroy later married Walter Gilmore, son of Billie Ace Gilmore and Virginia Foster Gilmore of Big Creek. In the forties, Elta and Walter lived on the McElroy home place with their children, Robert, Alice, Virginia, Betty and Pat until they moved to Oakland, California in 1942.

Mrs. Gilmore later moved near their daughters, Betty, Virginia and Patty in Litchfield, Connecticut where she worked as a nurse. She retired from nursing and moved to Port Richie, Florida. While there, she wrote the following story about the McElroy homestead at Red Rock Road and Number Seven Highway.

This article was first published in the Newton County Times in the seventies on the occasion of the official naming of McElroy Gap at the grand opening of Number Seven Highway. Elta McElroy Gilmore died at the age of 92. Walter, Virginia, Robert and Betty are now deceased. Alice lives in California and Patty in Connecticut...Colleen

Mrs. Elta McElroy Gilmore wrote and I quote:

I was born in the year of 1900 in a little town called North Washington, later changed to Dole, Ohio, many wonderful experiences happened to me in one lifetime. After moving to Cleveland, Ohio, I went to my first year of school there in Brathenahl where I was in the same class as President Garfield's grandson, Edward.

As a child, I saw the first airplane of the Wright Brothers flying low enough over our home to be able to read KITTY HAWK printed in large letters on the bottom of the plane, to watching on television Apollo 8 being launched from Cape Canavarel, and then hurrying into the yard to see it rise above the Florida pines, dropping it's glowing booster, a truly great experience. I feel in this alone, our wonderful country has come a long way.

Leaving our city home at an early age for Mother's health, my parents were inspired by glowing accounts of the healthful climate of Arkansas, which we found to be very true. There was land to be homesteaded there, and my father, being a poor man, decided a homestead would be a fineplace to raise two very active boys, my younger brothers. In 1915, Dad found a tract of 120acres of land on the Red Rock side of the Jasper Mountain near what is now Red Rock Road. He liked the land and proceeded to homestead and build a log cabin with the kind help of neighbors.

First clearing a spot large enough for his cabin, taking most of the summer, in September, he sent for us. Mother hired three men with three teams of horses and covered wagons to move us to our new home. We were six days on this trip, from Ohio to Arkansas. The roads were rough and they doubled up the teams of horses to get the wagons up the mountains as they were so steep. We walkedbehind the wagons most of the way, cooking our meals over a camp fire. At night, we slept in the wagons on top of the load under the canvas while the men slept under the stars or wagon, if it rained.

The last few miles, Father and a neighbor came to meet us and cut a roadway ahead of the wagons and we finally rode in to view of the little log cabin surrounded by woods. By the time our goods were unloaded into the cabin, there was very little room for us. Dad had put a loft in the cabin with a ladder nailed to the wall. We all slept up there except for a bunk in one corner of the cabin where the young hired man slept.

The cabin had a big fireplace built of real fieldstone, brought in from our field. My brothers, Ted and Russ were kept busy gathering pine knots for the fireplace, on a two wheeled cart they made.We used pine knots for light at night as kerosene for the lamp had to be carried in by hand from the nearest village store which was five miles up and down a mountain.

In order to "prove up" on a homestead, you were required to clear and fence ten acres of land within the three years allotted. Father and the hired hand did this in the first year we were there. All timber cut and not used to make rails to fence the land and not used for shingles orburned in the cook stove or fireplace, was piled into big log heaps in the clearing and burned one at a time at night after supper and the days work done. All of us sat on other logs enjoying the big bon fires.

That first year, trying to farm the land, plowing around the stumps was quite a struggle. Roots of the trees would catch in the plow and jerk the plow so the handles would give you a crack inthe ribs every so often. By the second and third year, they had rotted enough so they would break when the plow touched them. Anyhow, the results were very rewarding.

The land, being new and fresh with leaf mold grew such gardens and truck patches and fields of corn and cane, beans, and tomatoes, the likes I had never seen. Mother grew from seed enough peach trees to set out our own orchard of seedling peaches and apples and in three years we were picking peaches from our own trees. We also grew rhubarb, asparagus, gooseberries, wild blackberries to be had for the picking. Nicest of all, we lived in the heart of the wild blueberry country, which in Arkansas are call huckleberries. When not busy in the fields and garden we picked, dried and canned everything we could for the winter. We "holed up" potatoes, turnips and cabbages.

Dad bought a cow, six hens and a sow that gave us ten pigs. At six months of age they were ready to butcher, fattened on the worlds of acorns on the ground, giving the meat a sweet nutty flavor. We worked hard, clearing and planting and harvesting. Mother and I got as adept with an ax and gun as we were with a broom. Our iron pot of beans was kept cooking slowly on the fireplace most of the time. In winter, beans were our most staple food, cooking slowly with a good chunk of ham thrown in and a pan of cornbread with cold milk. A mighty nourishing and rib sticking meal for a hungry hard working family.

Working with green timber is a natural appetizer anyway. The men soon split out enough shingles by hand with a blade with two handles called a froe, building a lean-to kitchen on the back of our cabin. A welcome addition with it's hand hewn benches nailed to the wall on one side of the table. Early on we set up our cook stove out in the yard and it wasn't working very satisfactory, especially when it rained.

Ready for the winter, with a fire in the cook stove, we sat around the table and played cards on rainy days, always thankful for a day of rest. Occasionally a neighbor would drop in on these rainy days and play a few hands of cards. Sundays we carried the card games over into the evenings and Mother always had plenty of biscuits baked ahead which she split open and piled cooked dried peaches on top, serving with plenty of rich cream, our regular Sunday night supper. Mother dried peaches by removing the seed and laying the halved peaches up on the porch roof to dry in the sun. She would have sacks and sacks of dried peaches and apples prepared for winter in this way.

The only store bought provisions were what we could not grow ourselves, mostly coffee, flour, sugar and salt and rice. We grew corn and had it ground into meal at the nearest grist mill for a part of our bread supply. Father grew cane and made syrup with a neighbor who owned a sorghum mill. We dug Sassafras roots for a very tasteful and healthful tea.

I'm afraid our education rather suffered there for a few years with the only school in our district held three months of the year and it in the middle of summer. Walking to school through the brush we would get loaded with seed ticks and chiggers which would nearly drive you out of your mind while you were sitting in school trying to concentrate on your lessons. On the way to school, I well remember the abundance of papaws, big, luscious fruit that dropped from trees and occasionally one would hit a rock and splat. Also, lots of persimmons, chinquapins, black walnuts, scaly bark hickory nuts.

In those days, there were a few wild turkeys, wolves, bob cats and foxes. Plenty of copperhead and rattlesnakes and the big black snakes which were harmless except to your chickens and eggs. They swallowed little chickens as well as eggs. One day, I had to shoot one lying on a rock, up back of the house with a chicken in its stomach. Ugh!

You can reach me by email, Colleen Haynes Rongey

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