By Dr. Curtis Varnell
My kids groan every time we pass a civil war battlefield or see a historical marker along the road. Never knowing what may be discovered, they know we are about to take a short side trip to discover our history.
One such marker is found near the small Logan County town of Grey Rock. The Byrd memorial sits adjacent to the old Grey Rock Methodist Episcopal church and is a tribute to former slaves; Allen and Sarah Byrd.
Allen was born into slavery on the Titsworth’s Plantation near Roseville in 1815. One of the oldest pioneers in western Arkansas, he and his family assisted the Titsworth’s in creating the prosperous river port and agricultural area now known as Mcclean Bottoms. Owned as slaves by Jack Titsworth, Allen would have little realized the influence his life would have on future generations.
Sweetie Ivery Wagoner, another slave on the plantation, later recalled in her memoirs what life was like for the slaves on the Titsworth’s plantation.
Master Titsworth’s house was a pretty good frame place; the slave families sleep in their own cabins, but all their eating was done together in a long house made of rough brick, and the eating was plentiful with fresh killed beef or pork, plenty of corn pone made of meal ground by the old rock mills, with potatoes and vegetables seasoned high with the meats.”
“The old master was good to the slaves my mammy always said; never whipped them, but if they got mean and worthless he would sell them. “Lots of the slaves never learn to read or write, but the mistress teach my own mammy after the day’s work was done. They set in the house long after dark and the mistress teach her, and then on Sunday, every Sunday too, they would go a little church for the preaching. My mammy would set back over on one side of the seat rows.”
Allen would have much of the same experiences; his life one of a servant to the people that owned and controlled his life. Byrd must have been extremely talented, possibly a carpenter, basket maker, or blacksmith. Family history indicates that he worked on the side and was able to purchase his own freedom and that of his wife Sarah by 1863. Allen was known to be the first free black man to own land in Logan county, either given or purchased eighty acres of prime bottom farmland. Other freed slaves joined them to form the town of Grey Rock, a community that predates the formation of Logan County or Paris, the county seat.
Allen and Sarah had sixteen children, all but three who survived into adulthood. Most of them remained in the area and raised families. As former slaves, many of the residents of Grey Rock were eager to start their own school and church. Allen and Sarah donated an acre of land upon which would be established the first African Methodist Church in the region. The church became the center of the community for the sharecroppers and landowners in the community. It served as a school, church, community, and recreation center.
The once former slave became a prosperous property owner and community leader, accumulating more and more and more land. On his death in Nov. 1886, the former slave had enough property to deed each of his twelve remaining children forty acres of the land upon which he had been a former slave. Today, the main road in rural Paris is known as Byrd Lane and a Byrd family memorial monument sits in Grey Rock as a testimony to the life of this remarkable man and woman. Another stop, another lesson learned. It’s not how we start life that matters, it’s the quality of life and how we spend it that counts.
