Buttram’s Chapel — getting good things going

Sometimes as times change, and as the future works itself into a new present, the older things change; sometimes fading into used to be; and the significance they have had in developing that future may be forgotten or neglected. As one who believes that Pea Ridge has a significant history and heritage to share, having made important contributions to the development of settled life in northwest Arkansas, I also feel some urgency to say that without Buttram’s Chapel, we might not have had the village of Pea Ridge that developed in the last half of the 1800s, and we might not now have today’s growing town. Of course Buttram’s Chapel was not alone in it’s contributions to Pea Ridge. We shouldn’t forget Twelve Corners, Shady Grove, Bayliss, Jacket, Mo. and numer- ous smaller communities clustered around the rural schools of yesteryear. But in remembering them all, let’s not neglect to remember Buttram’s Chapel as a place of beginnings.

The community around Buttram’s Chapel and the Buttram’s Cemetery was early on a great agricultural community. The quality of the soils and cropland were as good in the area as anywhere on the plateau between the creeks, the plateau known early on as Pea Ridge, even before there was a village by the name. The area boasted great apple orchards and other fruits in the 1800s and early 1900s, and was part of the economic strength which helped families get established and prosper in new country where they had settled.

I wrote at length last week about the role of Buttram’s Chapel in the origins of the Pea Ridge Academy, in the days before public schools. The people in the Buttram’s Chapel community first began making the financial investments, offering the facilities, and sending the children, and they first enabled a school to catch on and endure in the Pea Ridge area.

With the coming of public schools in the mid1880s, Buttram’s Chapel was there again to respond to opportunity. Of course the early rural public schools were situated rather close together, and this would not remain the prevailing pattern when conditions changed, and when motorized vehicles replaced horses as the primary means of transportation. At one time Buttram’s had a small public school; another small school called Central was located at Leetown; and the Cross Lanes School was half-way between the two. By the 1950s all these outlying schools, along with a halfdozen others, had consolidated to form today’s Pea Ridge School District. But the outlying communities and their schools had performed a significant role in their day.

Looking to the early 1900s, we again find Buttram’s Chapel involved in beginnings. By this time, the Presbyterian Church had moved into Pea Ridge; the Methodists, with beginnings at Buttram’s Chapel and Hileman’s Chapel, would establish within Pea Ridge in 1907. The Christian Church in north Pea Ridge, established during the time of Professor J.R. Roberts at the Pea Ridge Academy, would eventually dissolve to form the Pea Ridge Church of Christ in 1922. During the 1920s, the Southern Baptists were busy drawing together a congregation and making plans for a new church in Pea Ridge. They met at Buttram’s Chapel early on. They would eventually finish and occupy their new church building in Pea Ridge in 1929. The original two-story Buttram’s Chapel building had been replaced in about 1895 by a one-story church building located nearer the road and facing north. That church building was severely damaged by a tornado in 1943, and was not rebuilt.

Today’s generations probably view Buttram’s Chapel primarily as one of the community’s beloved cemeteries, now more associated with memorial- izing people at the end of their lives. But that fact may even help us remember that the people who lived there, and who are now buried there, were pioneers with a vision: a people of creative beginnings, a people who dreamed of a strong, quality community, a sound, prosperous agriculture, fine schools, strong healthy churches, and a noble, high-toned way of life. We ourselves today have potentials in all these areas, in part because of them and people like them, who led the way in the beginnings.

••• Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.