William Henry Engels

William H. Engels

!he. history of the ~ngels' fa~ily in Washington County

begins in 1839 or 40 with the arrival, from Batesville, of the

oldest child of Henry Auter Engels, William Henry, in the area

of present-day Farmington. He and his brother, Abraham Allen

and sister, Sarah Jane came, evidently at different times, to the

home of their maternal uncles, William and Abraham Allen, in

the Farmington Valley after living with their Allen grandparents

following the death of their mother, Eliza (Allen) Engels in

1835. _William Henry, who was born on August 27, 1830 ~ade

the tnp seated on the back of a horse with his uncle Abraham at

the age of nine. The Allen brothers had been among the first

settlers in the valley, arriving about 1828. William Henry later

returned to Batesville to live with his father until the latter's

death in 1843. Henry Auter, whose home, "Engelside", was one

of the finest in Independence County, died without leaving a will

and the children received almost nothing of their father's

property.

While living with his uncles, William Henry attended the

Ebenezer Methodist Church and school, which was founded in

1833 and was one of the first Methodist Episcopal churches in

northwest Arkansas. The one-room log building was located

about two miles northwest of the present site of Farmington on

~d homeste_aded by William Woodruff. William Henry continued

attending the church and school after it was moved to a

similar building on land owned by James Kinibrugh in 1848 and

became known as "Hawthorne".

In 1851, Sarah Jane married Wyatt F. Woodruff who had

been in the company of about ninety men trav~ling from

Washington County to California in the '49 gold rush. Sometime

after 1870, she and her husband and five children moved to

Oregon and eventually settled in Spokane, Washington.

In 1852, William Henry went to Fort Smith, where he was

employed by Sutton, Griffith and Company, wholesale merchants.

Two years later, he took part in a seven-month, twentyday

cattle drive from Fort Smith to Stockton, California. His

clothes and other personal belongings were packed in a l' x 2' x

990 Families

William H. Engels and Isabella Kinnibrugh

10" pine box with a decorative strip of buffalo hide on the face of

the lid. During the drive, he kept a diary in a small, leatherbound

notebook, recording the date and mileage covered in each

entry with information on availability of wood grass and water

distinctive natural features along the route, an'd un~sual occur~

r~nces. One of the most extraordinary events of the trip was the

discovery of his brother's name, "A. Engels", carved on a tree at

a camp in the Rocky Mountains. Abraham Allen had also left the

Farmington Valley in 1852 and had traveled by oxen-drawn

wago~ t? Oregon, where he settled in the Umpqua Valley.

Wilham Henry returned to Fort Smith the following year and

in 1856, came back to the valley to stay. In December of 1856, he

married Isabella Clark Kinnibrugh, the daughter of James and

J~n~ (Moore) Kinnibrugh. The Kinnibrughs had come from Virginia

by way of Alabama about 1830, purchased 600 acres in the

valley, and built a two-story log house near a perennial spring.

They were the chief landowners in the area when Mr. Kin?

ibrugh died in 1842. In 1857, William Henry began constructing

a house on the hill on the opposite side of the spring. He

went deep into the forests on the Kinnibrugh land and, with a

broad axe, felled large oak trees, which he used to make braces

and underpinnings. These were fastened with wooden pins

which he and his uncle Abraham made. The sawed lumber wa~

brought in oxen-drawn wagons from the Van Winkle Mills at

War Eagle. William Henry and the men assisting him had to take

"grub boxes" and camping gear along in order to make the sixty

mile journey over rugged trails. The house was a two-story, eightroom

colonial-style structure with a brick chimney and two

fireplaces at either end. The chimney bricks were handmade and

baked in a nearby kiln. Interior paneling was put up with

wooden pegs and the walls were covered with beige plaster made

from lime, sand and horsehair.

William Henry and Isabella and their infant son, James

Henry, moved into their new home on June 1, 1858. That same

year, William Henry traveled 350 miles to St. Louis in a twohorse

wagon for a reaper. The first reaper had been brought to

Washington County only a year before. William Henry was

progressive in the use of farming and other types of machinery.

He was also the first in the community to have such "modern"

devices as kerosene lamps, cookstoves and window screens in his

home.

During the war, many people in the area went south before

the advancing Federal Army. William Henry and Isabella started

to leave once in a buggy with their two small children, but after

camping one night, decided to return. William Henry operated

the Allen Gristmills, which was owned by his Uncle Abraham

and was located about one-half mile southwest of the present site

of Farmington. As a miller, he was exempt from military service,

and he ground grain for both Federal and Confederate troops. At

this time, the community in the area was known as " Engels'

Mill". The mill was normally powered by mules on a tread belt,

but since these animals were difficult to keep during the war,

William Henry used oxen.

Foraging bands of Federal troops stationed in Fayetteville

pulled down William Henry's barn, graneries, and rail fences for

barracks and firewood and took his horses and other livestock.

Bushwhackers posed a constant threat to life and property. Food

had to be cooked before daylight and hidden in the wooden platform

beneath the stove. Family members took turns watching for

bushwhackers while the others ate. Once, they entered the house

while jars of milk were cooling in the breezeway, and after drinking

their fill, poured the rest on the floor. They ripped up feather

beds and quilts and drove off the livestock. They had killed

several men in the area when they came to the house one night

while the Engels were gathered in the family room and asked for

William Henry. Isabella, on her way to the front door, knocked

down some logs stacked by the fireplace as William Henry

opened another door and escaped, going up the stairs and holding

his boots by the straps with his teeth, scaling the wall into the

attic, where he was not found.

After the war, William Henry moved the mill to the spring

below his home and converted its power to steam. He also began

operating a sawmill in the community. About 1868, he had the

land on which the town of Farmington stands surveyed and

divided into 50' by 150' lots by Henry Ross, an early surveyor of

Washington County. His ambition was to establish a town and

the individual lots were priced at twenty-five dollars. He named

the town Farmington, since farming and rich farm land were

characteristic of the area. The new town acquired a blacksmith

shop, a wagon factory, a general and drug store, and a doctor. In

June of 1868, William Henry established a post office, which was

situated in the grist mill. In October, he became the second

postmaster of Farmington at an annual salary of one dollar, and

the office was moved to his home. The mail was brought to the

house in saddlebags on horseback and messages were sent by

word of mouth to those having mail. Patrons entered the

breezeway and received their mail through an opening that had

been made in one of the rooms. Stamps were canceled with an

inked thumbprint.

William Henry served as postmaster for thirteen years, retiring

in 1881. In 1876, he retired from milling, selling the Farmington

Gristmills to his cousin Abe Allen. A short time later,

Allen sold all or part of the mill to John Cato and a whiskey

distillery was built next to it. William Henry, an arch enemy of

strong drink, was up In arms. He began a campaign against the

"demon rum" and it was eventually outlawed in the area. In addition

to farming, he operated a steam thresher in the community

for ten years after selling the mill.

For some time after the town had been established, he

dreamed of building a new Methodist Church in Farmington.

Finally, in 1891, after securing the necessary support for the

project, William Henry and Isabella signed a deed donating town

lots three and four for the site, and the Farmington United

Methodist Church was built. Another major development was

the arrival, in 1901, of Ozark and Cherokee Central Railroad,

which carried passengers and freight between Fayetteville and

Muskogee. William Henry donated land for the Farmington station

and the right-of-way through a forty acre field.

One of William Henry's chief interests in his later years was

inventing. In 1889, while maintaining a farm of 140 acres, he

received Patent No. 408, 225, from the U. S. Patent Office for a

railroad handcar. Much of his spare time was spent collaborating

with a Mr. Kinney, who supposedly invented the Yale lock, in an

attempt to invent "perpetual motion".

He died at the age of eighty-six on March 20, 1917. Isabella

died on February 25, 1925 at ninety.

William Henry and Isabella had seven children, one of whom

died at birth. The two eldest, James Henry, born in 1857 and

Jane Eliza, 1860 died ten days apart in May of 1880 of an undiagnosed

ailment, probably appendicitis. William Henry was returning

from a trip to St. Louis at the time of his son's death. While

in camp at Shiloh (Springdale) he was met by a man who told

him, "Your boy has died. Since he had two sons, he asked him

which one he meant, but the man could tell him nothing more.

William Henry immediately made preparations for departure,

and then completed his homeward journey, wondering which

son he had lost.

The third child, Mary Belle was born on June 19, 1862. In

1888, she married John Preston Smith, who lived about a mile

south of Farmington and whose step-father was Abe Allen. His

father, William Clairborne Smith, had also been a miller during

the war and was murdered one evening while returning home

from the mill. John Preston was a retail merchant, and at different

times, owned the general store built by his older brother

Elbert "Eb" in Farmington and a men's and women's clothing

store, "The Leader" and "The New Model", on the town square

in Fayetteville. The Smiths had six children, one of whom died

in infancy. The eldest, Gladys married Peter Newport Bragg, who

was a descendant of the Civil War, General Braxton Bragg and

taught mathematics at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

The Braggs had three children, Peter Newport, Jr., who was

killed in World War II, John Smith and Braxton Victor. The

Smith's second and fourth children, Beulah Jane and Isabella

Kinnibrugh, were unmarried and both resided in Ft. Smith.

Catherine Mary and John Preston, Jr., the two youngest, made

their homes in Conway, Arkansas and in New Jersey.

Following the death of their third child, Hester at birth in

1864, William Henry and Isabella had another daughter, Alice

McClung, on August 28, 1866. She married James Franklin

Broyles, a farmer whose family had come to the area from Tennessee

by wagon train, in 1897. They had four children, Henry

Engels, James Hunter, John Kinnibrugh and Russel Roger. Of

these, James Hunter and Russel Roger made their permanent

homes in Farmington. James Hunter married Bonnie Gore in

1926 and they had four children, Alice Murline, James Hunter,

Jr., John Henry and Russel Kinnibrugh. Russel Roger married

Clara Montgomery in 1933. He served as postmaster of Farmington

from 1966 to 1971 and his wife Clara held the position

for twenty-five years before him. He also owned a grocery store

in Farmington for several years in the 1930s and 40s.

The son William Henry found still living when he reached

home after receiving the stranger's tragic message in Shiloh was

William Allen, then ten years old. William Allen was born on

October 9, 1869. After his brother's death, he was befriended by

a man named Isaac Cook, who lived with the Engels family for

several years. In 1891, he married Ola Mullins, daughter of

Henry and Sarah (Cox) Mullins, who lived in the Cato Springs

community to the east. After living In the family home about a

year and, then in a small wood-frame house on a corner of the

front yard, William Allen and his wife moved to a sixty-acre farm

about a mile southeast of town. Their house was a modest log

and wood-frame structure. The house and farm were purchased

from Lem Allen, who was probably a descendant of William and

Abraham Allen. The original 18' x 20' log building may have

very well have been the home of the Allen brothers. In September

of 1892, their first child, Garland Kinnibrugh, was born. A

daughter, Irene was born in June of 1896. Soon, both children

were attending the Cemetery Hill School in the neighborhood

and assisting with the numerous chores on the farm. William

Allen enjoyed farming and most of the crops known to the area

were raised on his farm. Wheat was the cash crop. At harvest

time, the wheat was cut and bound into sheaves with a binder

drawn by horses. One man drove the horse, while two followed,

setting up the bound sheaves to dry in shocks. later, the dry

sheaves were brought in from the fields by wagon to a steampowered

thresher, which had been rented from a neighbor and

set up on the farm. Part of the grain was taken directly to the

mill in Farmington and sold. The rest was stored in two granaries

in the barn. Among other crops raised on the farm were corn,

oats, barley, Irish and sweet potatoes, strawberries and apples.

Hogs, chickens and a small quantity of beef and dairy products

were raised for market and home use, and the farm maintained

from two to four horses of good quality. William Allen's horses

took several premiums in competition at the Washington County

Fair over the years. During the summer, he operated a hay baler

powered by horses on the farm. It is said he received $1.25 per

ton for baling.

In August of 1905, another child, William Hugh was born.

Shortly afterward, William Allen bought and took over the

management of the Smith General Store, which was situated on

the spring below the Engel's home in Farmington. For the next

four years, William Allen managed the store while Garland

maintained the family farm. At that time, the family lived in a

large, yellow frame house on the main street in town. When William

Allen sold the store in about 1910, he returned to his farm

and built a two-story, seven-room frame house on the site of the

original structure, hauling the construction lumber in horsedrawn

wagons from Fayetteville.

In 1914, tragedy struck the household when typhoid fever,

which had broken out in the area, was contacted by the family.

At the same time, every member of the family except Garland

was bedridden with the disease, and on December 1 of that year,

William Allen died. He was forty-five.

The family's circumstances continued to change as Garland

married soon afterward and moved to Texas, where he and his

father-in-law, Nin White, leased a wheat farm of 160 acres. Irene

married in 1917 and she and her husband, Arthur Stearns, lived

on the farm until Ola remarried in 1921 and moved to Elm

Springs. In the meantime, William Hugh graduated from the Farmington

grade school and moved to Siloam Springs to attend

high school at John Brown College. The house and farm were

sold when Irene and her husband moved away permanently in

1927.

Garland returned from Texas after four years and started a

dairy on sixty-seven acres purchased earlier by William Allen. He

began by supplying the Fayetteville Ice Plant with the milk to

make its ice cream. later, the milk was delivered in bottles to

homes and grocery stores throughout Fayetteville. The dairy had

from forty to fifty cows and two silos for storing the silage made

from chopped green corn plants. Garland operated "Engles'

Dairy" for fourteen years.

Of the three children of William Allen and Ola, only Garland

made his permanent home in Farmington. He and his wife,

Artie Nell had one child, Irene Mildred.

Irene and Arthur Stearns had two children, William Arthur

who was killed on a bomber mission in the Pacific in World War

II, and Ola Adell. After living in Fayetteville for several years,

the family settled in Oklahoma. Irene returned to Fayetteville

when her husband died in 1950.

After graduating from John Brown College in 1923, William

Hugh attended Hendrix College in Conway one or two terms,

then transferred to the College of the Ozarks in Clarksville.

There he met Robbie Bean, a native of Clarksville, whom he

married in 1926. They made their home in Fayetteville for

several years following the birth of their son, William Hugh, Jr.,

in 1929.

992 Families

The youngest child of William Henry and Isabella was Bertha

Kinnibrugh, who was born on October 4, 1872. She died on October

10, 1973 at the age of 101, and resided in her father's house

throughout her life. She and her husband, William Albert Gaskill,

a local carpenter, made their home there, remodeling the

dining room and kitchen area, following their marriage in 1904.

After the death of her husband in 1945, she lived alone in the

house until her nieces, Beulah and Isabella Smith, came to live

with her following their retirement in 1955. She remained mentally

alert to the end of her life and would often share her recollections

from childhood of the family home and neighborhood

with her nieces and nephews.

Bertha Gaskill's long life and residence at the Engel's home

probably account for the remarkable preservation of much of the

19th century decor of the house until the death of Beulah Smith

- by then, its sole occupant - in 1984. Up to that time, the

interior furnishings largely consisted of family treasures from the

last century, such as the four-poster bed made by a cabinet-maker

in Fayetteville as a wedding present from William Henry to

Isabella, a table believed to have belonged to James and Jane

Kinnibrugh before they left Virginia, a hand-woven basket given

to the Kinnibrughs by a few late-comers on the Trail of Tears in

return for food and shelter, an Eli Terry clock with wooden

works - the only item of his father's property William Henry

managed to bring back in his wagon on a return trip to Batesville

forty years after coming to Washington County. The ancestral

home itself, however, is still in the possession of the Engles

family.

By: Bill Engels----------------William H. Engels, farmer, was born in Independence County, Ark., August

27, 1830. His father, Henry A. Engels, was born and reared in Washington,

Ky., and at the age of nineteen years left his home to seek his fortune in the

West, locating in Independence County, Ark., where he engaged in farming,

and became one of the leading citizens of the county. He was the first sheriff

of the county after the State was admitted, and held the office six years. He

died December 9, 1843, and his wife, whose maiden name was Eliza ·Allen, and

whom he married in 1829, died in 1835. She was born in Alabama, a daughter

of Andrew Allen, one of the prominent men of Independence County, and

became the mother of three children: Abraham A., Sarah J. (wife of W. F.

W oodru:ff) and William H. The latter was but five years old when his mother

died, and he was reared by his uncles, William and Abraham Allen, of Washington

County, Ark. He returned to his father in a few years, but at the latter's

death returned to his uncli>s, with whom he remained until grown, In 1852 he

went to Fort Smith and entered the employment of Sutton, Griffith & C0.,

wholesale merchants, with whom he remained four vears. In 1854 he went

overland to California with a drove of stock, returning the following year, and

in 1856 returned to Washington County, where, in December of that year, he

was married and settled on the farm where he now lives. During the war, being

exempt from service, he remained at home and had charge of the Allen Gri8tmills,

and in 1865 removed the mills to Farmington, built the Farmington Gristmills,

and also operated a saw-mill. He laid out the town of Farmington, and

owned the land on which the town was built. In 1876 he retired from the milling

business and devoted his attention to farming, and for about ten years operated

a steam thresher. His wife, Isabella (Kinnibrugh) Engels, was born in

Washington County in 1834, and to her union with Mr. Engels four children

were born: Mary (wife of John Smith), Alice, William A. and Bertha. Mr.

Engels owns a good farm of 140 acres, with eighty under cultivation, and he and

wife are devoted members· of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr. Engels supplies

the following data of interest: The first thresher was brought to Washington

County in 1844; the first reaper in 1857; in 1858 he (Mr. Engels) went to St. Louis

in a two-horse wagon for a reaper, a distance of 350 miles, taking twenty-nine

days to make the trip. The first steam flouring mill in the county was erected

in 1854, at Fayetteville, by Stirman & Dickson, merchants of that place. There

are now (close of 1888) sixteen in the county.