Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Historical Marker For Randolph Repainted By Association

A historical marker in Gurdon was recently repainted through the cooperative efforts of the City of Gurdon and the Clark County Historical Association.

Mayor Rick Smith and Historical Association vice president Bobby Downs coordinated the activities necessary in making the marker once again readable. The marker, which has stood for several decades, commemorates the burial place near Gurdon of Meriwether Lewis Randolph.

The marker reads: "About twelve miles southeast of Gurdon are the homesite and grave of Lewis Randolph, Secretary of Arkansas Territory and grandson of Thomas Jefferson. In recognition of his services to Arkansas this marker was placed in 1959 by the Daughters of the American Colonists."

Lewis Randolph was the son of Thomas Mann Randolph and one of Thomas Jefferson's daughters, Martha Jefferson Randolph. Thomas Randolph was a Virginia congressman during Jefferson's administration.

During Andrew Jackson's administration, the niece of Jackson's deceased wife lived in the White House with other family members. Her name was Elizabeth Martin. She was known in Washington as "Pretty Betty Martin of the White House." She married young Lewis Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, in the White House.

Soon after their marriage, President Jackson appointed Lewis Randolph to the post of Secretary of Arkansas Territory, in the spring of 1835. The couple immediately moved to Little Rock and lived for a short time with Gov. William Fulton.

Soon, though, with statehood forthcoming, Randolph bought thousands of acres of what was then wilderness in the western part of Clark County, on the Terre Noir.

There, they began to improve the land and turn it into a plantation. With what must have been a considerable workforce, the Randolphs build several houses and cleared 300 acres the first year.

When they had lived there only a relatively brief time, Randolph traveled to Camden then called Ecore Fabre by boat, going down the Terre Noir, the Little Missouri and the Ouachita. It was March, and during his return a heavy rain fell.

By the time he reached his wilderness home he had developed a fever and died within a few days of what was termed "bilious congestive fever." His death came four months before his 28th birthday.

He was buried there, on his newly settled land. His widow took their infant son and went to the Hermitage, where she again lived as a member of the Jackson family for several years before remarrying.

For over a hundred years, Randolph's grave was unmarked. Then, in 1960, the Daughters of the American Colonists marked the site believed to be his actual burial place with a granite monument surrounded by an ornamental fence.

The monument reads: "At or near this site was buried in 1837, Meriwether Lewis Randolph, Secretary of Arkansas Territory and grandson of Thomas Jefferson. This memorial was erected in 1960 by the Daughters of the American Colonists."

It is interesting to note that Arkansas's last territorial legislature enacted a statute creating Randolph County. It was signed by Governor Fulton on October 29,1835.

The statute creating the county said it should be called "the county of Randolph, in honor of the late John Randolph of Roanoke." No other statute creating an Arkansas county mentions in whose honor the county was named.

Ten years earlier, Crittenden County had been created and named for Robert Crittenden, then secretary of Arkansas Territory.

The author of the act creating Randolph County intended the name to be in honor of young Lewis Randolph, the current secretary of the territory. But when the modest Randolph learned of this, he told the bill's author that it would be unseemly to name a county for him, since he was new to the territory and so young. He asked that it be added to bill that the name was "in honor of the late John Randolph of Roanoke."