H. Robert Allen

Hiram Robert Allen

In October, 1926, my parents, Hiram Robert (Bob) and Nella

Lynn Allen, moved our family from Cave Springs to 1319 West

Emma Avenue, Springdale. Our home had been purchased from

the Ivey family, and daddy had remodeled it. It still is there

today, standing the third house west of the present site of the

Springdale High School, the second house west of Pleasant Street.

None of the high school buildings were there then.

Back row, left to right; Lou Tucker, Laura Allen Davis, Georgia Allen

Goodrich, Hiram Robert Allen, Nell Lynn Allen, Elijah Allen, Mattie

Murdock Allen. Front row, left to right; Maggie Allen Matthews, Elijah

L. Allen, Aug Allen. Family reunion about 1912.

The sidewalk ended at the east edge of our yard, so we placed

our mailbox on a tree at that spot in order to qualify for city mail

delivery. Going on west, there were only two houses on West

Emma, but much farmland, including orchards. West End Street

was the boundary and where West Emma now goes further west,

there stood in those days the two-story home of the Clyde Solt

family. My brothers and I picked strawberries on that farm.

I attended the first two grades at the Old Grammar School on

Allen Avenue. The present South Central School building then

was the high school. It became my grade school when the threestory

high school building was erected on the north side of West

Emma Avenue in 1929.

Our neighbors included the Ed Cummings Sr., the Dave

Browns, the Elmer Linebargers, the Tom Fowlers, the Hoods, the

Holderreads and the Byrds, among others. We actually had a

postage-stamp farm there on Emma Avenue, including a large

barn and barnlot, a cow, chickens, pigs and large garden. We

burned coal in the livingroom heater and wood in the cookstove

and the dining room fireplace. We had a well in the yard.

A bricklayer and stonemason, daddy had needed to be nearer

the site of most of his work, and my older brothers needed more

job opportunities than were available at Cave. Daddy did the

masonry work on many of the buildings of the SpringdaleFayetteville

area in those days. I recall playing in the sand at the

job site when he was building the Dodson Memorial Home Ee

Cottage after that acreage became the high school plant.

Mother washed on a washboard and boiled the clothes in a

washkettle, hanging them on a backyard clothesline. Her irons

were heated on the cookstove, and on that stove she cooked our

food and canned hundreds of quarts of fruits and vegetables in

season.

In 1933, we moved to Combs in Madison County, returning

to Springdale three and a half years later.

I was second from the youngest of a family of 12 children.

Daddy and his first wife, Rosa Bluejacket, had four children:

Amy Catherine Allen, born in 1895 at Vinita, I. T. and died there

in 1897. Eva Vesta Allen married John Murdock at Cave Springs.

Both died at Springdale, he in 1979 and she in 1985.

Mayme Lanona Allen married (1st) Carl James and (2nd)

Warren Clark. She died in California. Theodore (Ted) Allen died

at Tulsa in 1 %4. Rose died in 1903. In 1904, Bob married Nella

Lynn at Adair, I. T. Their children: Lynn Allen married Gerald

Taylor. She died at Lubbock, Texas in 1959. Robert Allen

married Norine Carpenter. They reside at Anacortes,

Washington. Dean Allen married Leanore Hicken. She lives in

Springdale, and he died at Springdale in 1975.

Chester Allen married Jewel Dean White. He died in 1941 at

Springdale. Harold Allen married (1st) Louinza Gabbard and

(2nd) Marie Domke. He died in 1985 at Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

Franklin Allen was born in 1917 and lived one week. Billie

Sarah Allen married (1st) Russell Shipman and (2nd) Earle

Jines. Russell died in 1944 and Earle in 1984. Billie lives at Pea

. Ridge, Arkansas. .

Gwendolyn Allen married Russell Seay. They reside in

Springdale. Our parents lived out their lives at Springdale, where

Daddy died in 1947 and Mother in 1958. Both are buried at Cave

Springs.

Daddy's father, Elijah L. Allen, a native Georgian, came to

Arkansas in 1852. Daddy's mother, Ellen Townsend, a native of

South Carolina, came to Arkansas as a child. Elijah L. was a

Union veteran.

Mother's father, Lewis Lynn, also was a Union veteran. Her

mother was Sarah Ann Holt. Mother was born at Chautauqua

Springs, Kansas.

By: Billie Allen Jines