Every so often, as a break from work or laziness, I sort through the many FindAGrave memorials I've accumulated over the last decade. Other members of the website often add interesting information, links to family members and photos to the memorials I've created. Inevitably, I get drawn into finding more pieces of the puzzles that constituted the lives of these deceased. On this occasion, I came across an 85-year-old mystery.
One of the first cemeteries I traipsed through when I first began grave walking was Yell Cemetery, off Robinson Road in Benton County. There are more than 400 marked graves, and I remember spending the better part of a sweltering August day creating memorials and photographing headstones to upload to FindAGrave. Of those, I captured several of the Yell family, not realizing their significance at the time. Only when someone added newspaper articles to Archibald McKissick Yell's memorial did I realize the contributions of the Yell family to Arkansas, one of which pertained to a murder mystery in Siloam Springs in 1935.
Moses Archibald Yell was born in 1747 in Massachusetts. He led a flamboyant life as a pirate captain and Revolutionary War soldier before settling into life as Southern farmer. He married his second wife, Jane Currie, in 1790 and moved to Bedford County, Tenn. The couple had five children, the boys were named Archibald and Alexander. Archibald, born in 1797, participated in the War of 1812 and the First Seminole War. By all accounts, he was a violent and ambitious man who entered Tennessee politics after becoming a lawyer. He engaged in several duels and brawls but also developed friendships with strong leaders such as James Polk and Andrew Jackson. The latter appointed Yell to a legislative position in Little Rock in 1831. A bout of malaria forced him back to Tennessee, but he returned to Arkansas in 1835 to serve as a circuit judge in Washington County. Eventually, Archibald became the second governor of Arkansas in 1840. In 1844, he resigned the governorship and was elected to Congress. He formed a regiment to fight in the Mexican War in 1846 and was killed in the Battle of Buena Vista in February of 1847. His body was eventually moved to Evergreen Cemetery in Fayetteville in 1874.
Alexander Curry Yell was born in Tennessee in 1805 and followed his brother to Washington County (Ark.) in 1839. In 1850, he purchased some 300 acres in Benton County and became a farmer, living a much simpler life than his famous brother. He and his wife, Martha Coffey, had five children who helped work the farm. The youngest, named Archibald McKissik Yell in honor of his famous uncle, was born in 1848. He left the farm when he came of age and bought a house just east of the Hico area in Siloam Springs. Archibald never married. His sister Martha, older by 13 years, was also single. She moved into Archibald's house around 1909 and remained until her passing in 1928 at the age of 94.
Little is recorded of Archibald M. Yell, other than he was a Master Mason and known to be an "agreeable and intelligent gentleman." He was a wealthy recluse who occasionally took in boarders after his sister died. A gardener would come by several times a week to work around the house. This same gardener found Yell dead on the porch of his home on the morning of March 25, 1935. Mr. Yell had been shot behind the right ear at close range, and his home was ransacked. Rumor had it that Yell had recently received a large sum of money, and so robbery was the suspected motive for the murder.
At the time, Yell had taken in a 19-year-old man, John Gilden Mabry, as a boarder. Suspicion fell upon Mabry as the prime suspect, but he swore he was not at the house on the evening prior to the murder. Nonetheless, he was arrested on a first-degree murder charge several days later by Sheriff Earl Austin. A jury deadlocked 6 to 6 after his first trial in October, but Mabry was held in jail on a continuance. According to newspaper reports, he was released in March of 1936 on a $5,000 bond while awaiting another trial in September. The case was evidently dismissed sometime after, as no further reports of a trial or resolution of the murder were made.
John Mabry married Juanita Garr of Van Buren in 1939. A report in the Gentry Journal Advance in January of 1940 mentions that "Mr. and Mrs. Gilden Mabry of Fort Smith" were visitors to the home of J.R. Eldridge. Perhaps Mabry was actually exonerated of the crime, sufficient that he felt comfortable returning to the area. Mabry had a father and siblings in the Siloam Springs area which are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. John Mabry died in 1995 at the age of 78 and is interred with his wife in Gill Cemetery in Van Buren.
But the mystery of who killed Archibald McKissik Yell, last survivor of an iconic Arkansas family, still remains.
Devin Houston is the president/CEO of Houston Enzymes. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.