What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1242624
MAY 3-9, 2020 WHAT'S UP! 3 Pieces Of Pettigrew's Past Little town remains big part of local history BECCA MARTIN-BROWN NWA Democrat-Gazette I t all started with the St. Paul Branch of the Saint Louis & San Francisco Railway — better known as the Frisco. When the Frisco brought its terminus to the Madison County community of Pettigrew in 1897, with it came untold riches. The wealth of the region's cash crop — hardwood lumber — supported hotels, general stores, a bank, a movie theater with electric lights and a player piano, a grist mill and 12 stave mills. Anything that could be seen in a catalog could be purchased, as long as it could be delivered by train, from a custom- made man's suit to a car — although there were few roads to drive one on. Nearly 100 years later, sometime around 1985, it was the Frisco that brought Pettigrew to the attention of Bob Besom, then the director of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. "The museum had a booth at Pioneer Day in St. Paul, and that was the beginning," says Susan Young, outreach coordinator for museum. "That's when Bob met Wayne Martin." Martin had always had a passion for the history and preservation of his community, Young remembers, but the relationship with the Shiloh Museum gave it new dimension. Martin was preparing to clean out and sell the contents of the Mooney-Barker Drug Store, a fixture of the community operated by his great-grandfather, Dr. W.H. Mooney, and his grandfather, A.P. Barker, a pharmacist, from 1916 until his grandmother, Helen Mooney Barker, closed it in 1980. And Besom was invited to prowl through its contents. Sold at auction in January 1986 was everything from an operating table — which went to a local veterinarian — to Model T parts, baskets in which bananas were delivered to the store, a gas pump and Magnolia Oil Company sign, shotgun shells and full containers of black powder. But particularly intriguing to Besom were an antique accounts register still full of unpaid bills and all the paperwork from the Citizens Bank of Pettigrew. Wayne and June Martin stand on the sidewalk in front of the Mooney-Barker Drug Store in Pettigrew. An auction that uncovered its contents also helped make Pettigrew one of the best documented little towns in Arkansas, according to the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. (Courtesy Photo/Becca Martin-Brown) FAQ Shiloh Museum Learn more about the Shiloh Museum at shilohmuseum. org SPRINGDALE See Pettigrew Page 4