This photo is from my visit to Tate county during the summer of 2005.  Tyro, the birthplace of John Howell, was once a thriving town.   Today, it's just a small farm community, with no stores and few paved roads.

Have you ever asked yourself who are the Howells and where did they originate from?  These questions haunted me in the 1980's and I wanted answers.  My father, Roy Howell (Howard) was deceased and his only surviving sister was Blanche Swanigan, 95 years old.  After visiting Blanche and questioning her about the Howells, I decided to find other relatives that I had heard of when I was younger.  I visited Marvel, Arkansas with my video in hand to meet John Howell’s descendants that I knew existed, but never recalled meeting.  That visit inspired me to write this book.  I wanted my family to enjoy the wonderful experience I had when I discovered my family’s intriguing personalities, traits, and stories.  I hope the family will read, expand upon, and pass this book down to future generations of Howells. 

John Howell was born into slavery in 1845 in Tyro township in Tate county Mississippi.  It is currently unknown who his parents were as well as the owner the plantation.  I plan to further my research by visiting Tate county Mississippi (Senatobia) again to examine the court records and search for additional information on the Howell family.  Marriage records from Desoto county Mississippi show that John Howell married Kate Eaverson on December 2, 1871.  Desoto county is located approximately 8 miles north of Tate county.  The 1880 Federal Census for Tyro Township in Mississippi listed John at 35 years of age as the head of the household.   Kate, 30 years of age, was listed as his spouse along with the following the children and their ages: Mary(12), John(10), Callie(8), William(5), and George(3).  (George is my grandfather).

John Howell was said to be of lean stature approximately 6 feet tall, bowlegged,  and a very hard worker.  He was also known to have a quick temper.

John Howell's Journey from Coldwater Mississippi

 There are several different accounts of how John came to Wheatley, Arkansas.  Ida Mae Howell, daughter of William, and one of the oldest surviving relatives of John at 96 years old, told me one of the most detailed and intriguing versions.  She said that John, her grandfather, and Katie, his wife came to Arkansas from Coldwater Mississippi.  Coldwater is located in Tate county just northwest of Tyro.  John told her that he had to swim across the Mississippi river in order to save his life. 

John’s life was in danger because white men were seeking to kill him.  As the story goes, one day while working on a farm putting up fence posts, he was approached by a couple of white men.  For some reason unknown, one of the men started hitting and kicking him.  John became very upset and grabbed one the fence post and began to fight back.  When the dust settled on the melee, one of the white men lay dead from multiple blows to the head from the fence post.  After he realized what he had done, killed a white man, he knew his life was over even though it was self defense.  John knew if he stayed in Mississippi he would face sure death, by hanging or beaten to death by an angry mob.  To avoid this inevitable fate, John fled the area and somehow made it to the Mississippi river where he swam across to the Arkansas side.  I calculated the distance that John had to travel to get from Coldwater Mississippi to the Mississippi River was approximately 29 miles.  He most likely made this journey on foot through the swamp and woodlands.

Once John arrived on the Arkansas side of Mississippi river, where did he go from there?  One story was that he first went to  Fort Smith, Arkansas.  While working in Fort Smith, he learned of  land opportunities in the Brinkley, Arkansas area.  Being opportunistic, John made the journey to Brinkley, and was somehow able to acquire between 160 to 200 acres of land.  It’s unknown exactly how John acquired the land, whether he purchased it outright, or he sharecropped it until he was able to make the purchase.  The latter is the most likely scenario.  At any rate, it is impressive that John was able to be a successful land owner and farmer in the oppressive and hostile environment for blacks living in eastern Arkansas at the turn of the19th century.  It was downright treacherous for black people during that time, as evidenced by the following excerpts from the Slave Narratives taken from former slaves in Brinkley and Wheatley.  The following is from an interview with a man by the name of Walter Brooks:

The Slave Narratives is a very interesting piece of work that contains over 20,000 pages of interviews with more than 3,500 former slaves in the southern United States.  This effort began in 1929 at Fisk University in Tennessee and Southern University in Louisiana to document the life stories of these former slaves.  Kentucky State College continued the work in 1934 and from 1936-1939, the Federal Writer's project (a federal work project that was a part of The New Deal) launched a coordinated national effort to collect narratives from former slaves.  Walter Brooks was just one of the participants from the Brinkley - Wheatley Arkansas area.

So it was in this environment that John was able to farm his own land and successfully raise his family.  I recall my father telling me that John was a very smart man, how he taught himself to read.  He said John would purchase a newspaper every week and read the entire paper during the week, and then purchase a new one for the next week.  He said he had a remarkable ability to remember everything he read.  John was also a respected member of the community.  Mary Love, 94, John's grand daughter through his daughter Jenny Ann, told me that John was the founder of the cemetery for blacks in Wheatley, and it was his idea to have a row of gravesites reserved for each family.  Upon visiting this cemetery, I could see how the rows were perhaps initially set up, although they are no longer being adhered to due to the lack of space.  Mary was very disappointed that John  wasn't buried in that cemetery (more about this later).

Through his skillful application of farming methods and techniques, and his ability to deal with crooked white people, John was able to acquire a good amount of wealth from his land, although the amount is unknown.   He didn't trust banks with his money and he was known to have large sums of cash on his place.  My father told me he would bury his money in different places around his property.  He said eventually someone saw where he was burying his money and subsequently stole it from him.  Some family members say that it was other family members who stole the money while others say that white people stole it.  Either way, this proved to be a very devastating blow to John, and was the catalyst to him beginning to lose his mind.  I can only imagine how difficult this was for him to deal with given all he had to go through to acquire this money.  Gone was his nest egg to support Kate and him in their old age, and the prospects of re-gaining it was very slim given his age. 

John was eventually committed to the state mental institution in Little Rock, Arkansas by certain family members.  Mary Love told me that her brother, Elbert Swanigan, who was working for the railroad in Little Rock, went by to check on John only to learn that he had passed away a few months earlier.  The institution apparently cremated John's body, and thus Mary's disappointment he wasn't buried in the Wheatley cemetery that he founded.  While its unclear how all of the events transpired, Mary feels like certain family members just threw him away. 

Pauline Rodgers, 86, John's grand daughter through his son Elijah, told me that Kate remarried a very light skinned man (don't recall the name).  She said her father Elijah did not approve of his mothers remarriage, and refused to accept the man. 

To Be Continued.......