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New Rogers Museum exhibit looks beyond Civil War battles
ROGERS — Tales of the Civil War in Northwest Arkansas tend to focus on the battles at Pea Ridge (March 7-8, 1862) and Prairie Grove (Dec. 7, 1862).
What Monte Harris wants to convey in “Rebels, Federals and Bushwhackers,” which opened Saturday at the Rogers Historical Museum, is that those battles didn’t take place in a vacuum. Surrounding them on every side were farmers struggling to feed their families, settlers seeking to keep their homes safe and outlaws bent on personal gain.
Harris ran across “some obscure pieces of history” in the records of the Southern Claims Commission — where citizens who remained loyal to the U.S. could file for compensation for losses during the Civil War — and knew she’d found “a great opportunity.”
“The information put a new perspective on some of the old mysteries that we’d been looking at for a long time — for instance the burning of Bentonville in 1862,” says the museum’s adult programs educator.
Oliver M. Young and his wife Elizabeth, along with their infant son, hung on to their home near the Bentonville town square — watching various military units haul away their mules and wagons filled with their corn, oats, charcoal and hay — until their house was finally burned by Union troops.
What Harris discovered was Young’s paperwork requesting compensation, and “it was like putting a puzzle together,” she says. “He was able to comment on a particular part of the burning of Bentonville that may have been the reason it happened — I’m sure it was the reason it happened — but it’s a little mystery you’ll have to come to the exhibit to solve.”
Families like the Youngs had little choice but to turn to the Union for help. Col. Marcus LaRue Harrison — one of the Union commanders at the Battle of Prairie Grove — came up with a solution: farm colonies.
“Food provisions were running low as the Union Army supply wagon trains were under constant attack, and since it was far too dangerous to plant crops, many starving civilians asked for help,” Harris writes in the exhibit notes. “In 1864, Col. Harrison devised a plan to organize farm colonies where citizens could live and work together in protected areas.”
Harrison planned 10 in Washington County and two in Benton County, and the Youngs moved to the one in Bentonville.
In addition to food, “the farm colony projects provided a safe place for people willing to swear allegiance to the Union,” Harris says. In part, that included protection from bushwhackers, outlaws and rogue soldiers who sometimes made camp at Walnut Springs in Benton County.
“The Mystery of Walnut Springs,” as that segment of the exhibit is called, was solved only recently.
“Nobody knew where it was until very now,” says Terrilyn Wendling, assistant director of the Rogers Historical Museum.
The other part of the mystery, Harris adds, was what happened to five Union soldiers buried there in 1863.
“Constant attacks on military supply wagon trains and telegraph wires caused Col. Harrison to issue the order to burn homes near the damaged telegraph wires,” Harris explains. “Harrison’s order enraged Walnut Springs neighbors, who some people say killed the five Union soldiers.”
In addition to audio and video components, the exhibit includes the facade of a Civil War-era home, inside which visitors can see “quite a collection of period domestic items,” many of them on loan from Harris.
“I am fifth generation Benton County resident, had five great-uncles in the battle of Pea Ridge, and my family on my father’s side all lived within a mile of ground zero at the Pea Ridge battle,” Harris says. “So I’ve always been interested, and collecting from that period of time has helped me learn more about it.”
Among the items on show are many photographs, a revolver that was discovered on one of the battlefields, an artillery jacket, period coverlets — woven on a loom, not created by piecing as quilts were — crockery, furniture and accessories such as lamps and a split-oak basket, all of them outside the usual scope of the Rogers Historical Museum’s collections.
“We mostly collect from the era of the founding of Rogers in 1881,” says Jami Roskamp, museum curator. “I don’t have family historical grounding in the Civil War, so it’s been new and exciting to me to learn.”