John Martin Cawthon

Delta Mae (Cawthon) Harden remembered places her parents lived while she was a child. She reminisced about the farms of Old Lease, Johnson Switch [now Johnson], Valley Side Farm in Springdale Twp, Spring Valley Farm, and in Siloam Springs, AR.

On the 1900 AR census, John Martin Cawthon is shown to be in Prairie Twp, AR.

Delta especially remembered the Spring Valley Farm, with its big fruit orchards. Her father would but a run-down farm and revitalize it. She remembers the children all crawling on their bellies to cut the brush under the neglected fruit trees. Soon the fruit trees would bear much under John Martin's careful expertise. They lived at Spring Valley Farm only one year. Her father lost the farm and moved to Siloam Springs.

Dabney Leonard, also known as Leo, during the War, in which he was serving overseas, would send home his paychecks in order to help support his father and the farm effort.

John Martin Cawthon even cashed in his insurance policy in an effort to save the loss of the farm. At the end of Leo's service time, he purchased the family farm from his father. A well deserved privilege. [s.9]

John Martin was blind in one eye, and had a severly cut ear from a mining accident in KY [s.9].

He was baptized 1906 at Shady Grove Baptist Church of Christ [s.23].

The land he farmed is now the Northwest Arkansas Mall [s.22].