From Rector to Carter
Rex Nelson
The town of Rector in Clay County is named after one of the state’s colorful characters, former Gov. Henry Massie Rector. Rector also just happens to be the hometown of an equally colorful modern character, Bill Carter.
Let’s start with Rector, the state’s sixth governor, who was born in 1816 near Louisville, Ky. Rector’s father was among the numerous Rectors who worked as deputy surveyors throughout Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. Henry Rector came to Arkansas in 1835. His family had close relationships with the state’s first and fifth governors, James and Elias Conway.
Rector was elected to the Arkansas Senate in 1848, served as the U.S. surveyor general for Arkansas from 1853-57, was elected to the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1854, and was elected to the state Supreme Court in 1859.
According to the book “The Governors of Arkansas:” “His Supreme Court rulings were singularly inept. Despite his considerable kinship connection with the politically powerful dynasty known as the Family (made up of the Johnson, Conway and Sevier families), Rector seems to have managed to offend most of his kin, even to the point of suing them and publicly differing from them on key political issues.
“The Family dominated state politics in the antebellum period, having established itself as the friend of the common man. Until the 1850s, the Family had neutralized competition in the Democratic Party. However, the enormous growth of population severely challenged the Family’s dominance.”
Rector was elected governor in 1860. The authors of “The Governors of Arkansas” note that “a noisy crowd went to his home and ‘liquored’” during his inauguration and that the event “coincided with the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln as president. … Rector, in his first address to the Legislature, claimed that the North had no right to elect a Northerner and hence, the Union now being dissolved, Arkansas was independent. Silence greeted this eccentric theory.
“Arkansas remained in the Union, albeit tenuously, until the firing on Fort Sumter forced the issue. When Lincoln called for volunteers after the fall of Fort Sumter, Rector refused.”
Rector presided over Arkansas’ exit from the Union but was defeated in October 1862 by Harris Flanagin of Arkadelphia, a former Whig. After the Civil War, Rector oversaw his plantations in Hempstead, Garland and Pulaski counties.
“His latter days were spent in Hot Springs, and he seems to have used a shotgun to assist in collecting his rents,” the book notes. “Part of the town’s later folklore was to attribute to Rector’s ghost any unexplained explosion.”
Rector died on Aug. 12, 1899, and is buried in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock. The northeast Arkansas town named for him was incorporated in September 1887.
It was in Rector that William Neal “Bill” Carter was born in January 1936. His father was a farmer, and Bill Carter spent his share of time in the cotton fields of Clay County.
“On one occasion in high school, Carter was expelled for starting a fire in an abandoned building where he and his friends were drinking,” Colin Woodward writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “Carter graduated from high school and also worked for a time at a funeral home in Rector. Later in life, unlike some of his famous clients, Carter shunned drugs and only drank occasionally.”
He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953 and later enrolled at what’s now Arkansas State University at Jonesboro. Carter graduated from college in 1961 and entered law school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. In 1962, he was recruited by the U.S. Secret Service and served with the agency until 1966. Carter then returned to law school.
“While practicing law in his home state, Carter found himself defending characters from Hot Springs, including members of the Dixie Mafia and madam Maxine Jones,” Woodward writes.
Carter became friends with U.S. Rep. Wilbur Mills, who later put him in touch with the Rolling Stones.
“Carter was the Stones’ lawyer from 1973-90, including during their 1975 tour,” Woodward writes. “Carter kept Keith Richards and bass player Ron Wood out of jail after their July arrest at Fordyce. On another occasion, Carter saved a strung-out Richards from jail during a run-in with Canadian officials, who had arrested Richards for drug possession.
“While Carter was representing the Rolling Stones, he was also working for Tanya Tucker, who moved to Little Rock in the mid-1970s. With Carter’s help, Tucker negotiated a lucrative recording contract with MCA Records in 1975. Other clients included Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa and musician David Bowie.”
Carter even negotiated the return of actor Steve McQueen’s body after McQueen’s death in Mexico in 1980.
“Carter, through some well-timed trickery, luck and intimidation—and the help of funeral workers in San Antonio—managed to have the body back on U.S. soil in a matter of hours,” Woodward writes. “In 1981, Carter opened a law practice in Nashville, Tenn. When he began managing musician Reba McEntire, Carter retired from practicing law. In 1995, he helped establish the ‘Gaither Gospel Hour’ on The Nashville Network.”
In 2006, the Rector native released the book “Get Carter.” He wrote that he never was good at legal research. His keys to success, Carter said, were being tough when necessary and staying focused. Carter later created the Rector High School Helping Hands Foundation and helped coordinate the first Johnny Cash Music Festival in northeast Arkansas.