Chronicles of Oklahoma

Chapter II
ESTABLISHMENT OF "OLD" MILLER COUNTY,
ARKANSAS TERRITORY
By Rex W. Strickland
By 1820 there was a very considerable population living along
Red River above the Great Raft. A territorial census taken in the
last half of the year revealed the number of persons resident in the
newly created Miller County was 999, of whom 82 were negro slaves.'
Undoubtedly the greater part of the settlers were located on the
north bank of the river in the vicinity of Clear Creek but the settle-
ments at Pecan Point andJonesborough were being augmented steadily
by an influx of immigrants from the older peopled areas farther east.2
The increase in the number of "squatters" called for the creation
of a new county out of the western townships of Hempstead County
under whose jurisdiction the area was administered. Thus on April
1, 1820, Governor James Miller signed an act previously passed by
the assembly of the Arkansas Territory to "erect and establish the
County of Miller."    The new division was delimited by the follow-
ing boundaries:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the Territory of Arkansas,
That all that portion of the County of Hempstead and bounded as follows,
to-wit: Beginning on the north bank of the great Red River, at a point
due south of the Cossetat Bayou, a branch of Little River, thence due north
to the mouth of the Cossetat Bayou aforesaid, then up said bayou to the
head of its main branch, then north to the boundary line of Clark, then
due west with said line to the Canadian river, or the Indian boundary line,
then with the said line to the great Red river aforesaid, then southeasterly
with the Indian or Spanish boundary line to a point due south of the
point of beginning, then due north to the beginning, to be laid off and
erected into a separate county, to be called and known by the name of
the county of Miller.3
To attempt to determine with exactness the extent of the area
set forth in the act would be an exercise in historical casuistry of
relatively little value. The eastern and northern boundaries of the
county may be fixed with some degree of accuracy but the western
and southern limits are vague, either by design or because of neces-
sity. Without attempting to be more precise than were the terri-
torial solons, let us say that "Old" Miller County took within its
margins the western halves of present day Little River, Sevier and
Polk counties in Arkansas, all of McCurtain, Choctaw and Pushma-
1 Arkansas Gazette (Arkansas Post), March 3, 1821.
2 For example, James J. Ward, senior, with his sons, James, junior, Joseph and
Jordan, from Tennessee, settled at Pecan Point in the spring of 1820. Milam's
Registro; Record of the Board of Land Commissioners (Transcribed) Red River
County, 7 and 14. James Walters located in March, 1820, near Jonesborough on an
improvement which he had purchased from Adam Lawrence. Registro.
3 "An Act to erect and establish the County of Miller" in the Arkansas Gazette,
July 22, 1820.

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