A group of volunteers in Bella Vista are making history -- literally. By recording the memories of long time residents, volunteers are adding a new dimension to the history of Northwest Arkansas.
The two women heading up the project locally are members of the Butterfield Trail Questers Chapter, but they've recruited help from The Blowing Springs Quester Chapter and others with an interest in history. Questers is an international group whose members share an interest in history and in historical artifacts. The local chapters meet once a month.
Connie Fetters, past president of the Butterfield Trails Chapter, was interested in oral histories when she heard about the Pryor Center at University of Arkansas.
According to their website, pryorcenter.uark.edu/,the center was created in 1999 to document the cultural heritage of Arkansas by collecting audio and video interviews. The Pryor Center trains the volunteers and lends them the equipment needed to record an oral history. The local group uses only the audio recording equipment.
The only qualification to become a subject in the local project is that a person has to have a connection to Northwest Arkansas. Some of the subjects were born in the area and lived their entire life close by, but others were born somewhere else but have a story about Northwest Arkansas.
Interviews are usually done in local museums or community centers, Camille Hatcher, the second coordinator for the project, said. They usually travel to where the subect is located and recently two volunteers traveled all the way to Kansas City to speak to former Bentonville residents who owned a store downtown.
Since the Butterfield Trails Questers primary project is the historic museum in Gravette, they started by interviewing residents of the Gravette/Hiwasee/Maysville area.
Fetters said she was impressed by their sense of community.
"Many of the persons we interviewed left the area and came back. There is a pride in their roots and many would like their children and grandchildren to come back to the area if they have left. One old timer from Hiwassee pointed out that you didn't really want to talk about anyone, because almost everyone was kin in the area."
They also spoke about the ways they supported the community.
"It is also pretty special how the Gravette Day festivities are still going strong for so many years," she said.
There's no limit to the amount of interviews the group will complete, Fetters said. Over the past three months, they have completed 18 interviews and there are about 20 more referrals they will schedule as soon as possible.
Many groups, including local historical museums, do oral histories, Fetters said, but what makes the Pryor Center different is their plan to archive all the histories their volunteers turn in. Each one will be transcribed and both the transcription and the recording will be posted on the Pryor Center web site where they will be accessible to anyone with an interest.
"The families will be able to find them and look back," Hatcher said.
During their training at the center, the volunteer historians were told to ask just a few guiding questions and let their interviewee talk, Fetters said. The tapes won't be edited, she explained, although the Center personnel may remove some long silences. The subject of each interview will be able to listen to their session and approve it before it's placed online.
They've had a few surprises while doing the histories, Fetters said. For example, while everyone knows about the apple orchards in Benton County, few people know that there used to be a walnut factory in the area that was a major employer. The hulls of black walnuts were used in several different industries, she said, even munitions.
Both Hatcher and Fetters were impressed when they heard stories about the depression in Northwest Arkansas.
"It was an inclusive community that helped each other," Hatcher said.
They also heard stories about going downtown on a Saturday, Fetters said. It was a family event, but when they arrived in town, the family separated with the women congregating in one spot, the men in another and the children playing with their friends.
One recent subject, Bella Vista resident Norma Clark, spoke about when John Cooper first started buying up the farms around the old Bella Vista resort. No one knew what was planned for the area and some residents believed it was going to be a secret military base -- maybe a missile site.
Another subject told Fetters about the time when everyone was sure the railroad was going through Maysville and an ambitious resident built a brick hotel to house the passengers. Then the railroad was built through Gravette and the hotel was dismantled brick by brick and reassembled in Gravette.
They also heard about a turkey drop in Gravette. The turkeys weren't thrown out of a helicopter, but they might have been thrown off the roof a building downtown. The interviewee wasn't sure of the details -- or the survival rate of the turkeys.
When they traveled to Van Buren for an interview, they got a first-hand account of the desegregation of local schools from a former Rogers resident.
"We want to keep these stories alive," Fetters said. "It's important."
It's also very fulfilling work, Hatcher added.
They are looking for more subjects and more interviewers, as well as for a few good typists to work at home transcribing the interviews. To volunteer or to tell them about a potential interviewee, call one of the coordinators, Camille Hatcher at 479 855-4761 or Connie Fetters at 479 640-3519.
General News on 11/21/2018