"Walden" Family From CARROL County
Descendants of
Joseph B. WALLEN and Elender (Nellie) BAKER WALLEN
of Carroll Co., Arkansas
Please note: this file based upon submitted descendant charts, the typing
errors are all mine.
Additional bits of information have been added here and there.
We welcome any suggestions or additions.
Submit your own family !
Sources:
Ken Matney (kmatney@midkan.com)
1860 Madison County Census, Ceder Twp.
1870 Carrol County Census, Cedar Twp.
"The Walling Family" by Tom Walden (BELOW)
Goodspeed's Carrol County 1889
The Walling Family
by Tom Walden
Transcribed and with intoduction by Ken Matney. (Thanks Ken!)
I recently made a trip to Carroll County Arkansas. Found the old home
place of my GGreatfather. Stop at the house of Mable Walden who still
lives on the old homestead. She is the daughter-in-law of Thomas Walden,
one time sheriff and judge of Carroll County. She gave me an article
written by Tom Walden. Thought I would share it with all of you.
The Walling Family
by Tom Walden
In the early Colonial days two young men left England and came to
America. They were Welch and French descent. They settled in North
Carolina and later went to Kentucky two years before Boon, but history
does not record this fact. They stayed in Kentucky one year and one
decided to go back to North Carolina and bring their families to
Kentucky, they only had one butcher knife, they broke the blade so each
waold have a knife. They did not stay long in Kentucky after their
families came, but went to East Tennessee and settled near Clinch River.
Their names were Thomas and Joseph and these are familiar names in the
family today. They lived to be very old, one was killed by the indians
and the other froze to death. A large estate was left to them in England, but
the family could not make the proof required. When I was a boy father
and the Rice brothers of Bentonville worked to get proof but failed. The
Rice's are distant relatives of the Walling family.
In some way our family name has become corrupted, it was changed to
Wallen and father said this was done to shorten the name. In 1882 the
Eureka Springs Rail Road Company built a road from Seligman, Mo. to
Eureka Springs, this road ran through father's farm and the Company
built a flag station on father's farm and named it Walden. Since that
time everyone has called our family name and spelled it Walden.
My grandfather Joseph B. Wallen was born in East Tennessee in 1798.
Grandmother was a Province, she too was born in East Tennessee in 1798.
To this union were born eight children, Henry P. (my father) James Carr,
Mary, John D., Hannah, Tommy, who died when about ten years old, Joseph
P. and William. Grandfather and all his family left Tennesse in 1850,
did not know where they were going only west and this was before Horace
Greely said, "Go west young man and grow up with the country." They were
not looking for farm land, they wanted to find a country with plenty of
wild game and they found it.
They came through Springfield, MO. when there were only three
buildings, two dellings and a blacksmith shop. They could have had their
choice of the best land for $1.25 per care or could have homesteaded 160
acres each, but no, not enough game there. They settled at Washburn,
Mo.,then known as Keetsville.
The trip from East Tennessee to Keetsville was made in a wagon drawn
by an ox team and a pony that some of the children rode. They were on
the road a long time. The men walked, carried their gons and hunted
along the way. They would camp and the men would go to every shooting
match they could hear about. Father was the best shot, he would stick
the point of his knife into the paper and bet a $1.00 a shot that he
could cut or drive it out at a distance of sixty yards with his muzzle
loading rifle.
Those that came were Grandfather, Grandmother, Father and his wife
and two children, Hannah, her husband and two children, Mary and her son
and John and his wife, the others were single. Grandfather died at
Washburn about 1854 and Grandmother lived until after the close of the
Civil War. The are both buried in the Pasley cemetery near Washburn.
My uncle John D. (who was called Long Goody) settled near Busch,
Arkansas. He was the oldest settler on the White River. At this time all
this part of the County belonged to Madison County and was referred to
as the leg of Madison County. John D. was a unique characer, he stood 6
ft. 2 in., long arms and could swing a crable better than any man, he
always cut a swath eleven ft. wide.
Others who came from Tennessee were James Miller, George Cope, George
Wallin. Father, Uncle John, Miller and Cope were brothers-in-laws all
having married daughters of Billy Walin in Tennessee, a name similar to
our own but no relation. They settled near father's farm.
In 1857 father bought a farm on Butler Creek two miles west of Beaver,
Arkansas and this farm has belonged to our family since that day and at
the present time is ouned by my son, Smead Walden. It will never be sold
for Arkansas is good enough for anyone.
Father told me that in the spring of 1857 he make his first crop on
this farm, that he only had one pony, no feed, that he would plough the
pony all day, turn it out at night to graze. When morning came he would
take his gun, go hunt the pony. That spring he killed fifty two deer and
so many turkeys that he did not try to keep count. When I was a boy we
had dried venison and dried beef in our smoke house all the time.
Father built the mill that is known as the upper Roaring River Mill
for Billy McClure. He also built the other mill on Roaring River.
On the Blue Spring farm ia a double log house, all logs are ceadar
father cut and hued every piece of that building for a small two year
old heifer, worth about seven or eight dollars.
The Civil War came on in 1861 and I must add a little state history to
this story, lest we forget. Arkansas held a convention and voted to stay
in the Union. Later President Lincoln called on Arkansas to furnish
75,000 troops to fight their southern neighbors. The Governor called
another convention and delegated voted 69 to 1 to secede. Murphy of
Madison County voted against secession. He later became Governor of the
state. He and Powell Clayton are the only Republican Governors the state
has ever had. Father was a Union man but too old for service.
In the spring of 1862 father moved to Lawrence County, Mo. A few days
before he moved the Union troops killed his nephew, a 15 year old boy.
Father was forced into the Mo. state Militia and served two months.
Uncle Joe had gone back to Tennessee and enlisted under General Bragg,
he was a doctor and served as a spy for Bragg. He as a spy went through
the Union Army just before the battle of Perryville, Kentucky. He
aferwards killed a Confederate Captain in order to save his captain's
life. He was advised by his Captain to go north and join the Union army.
After the close of the war he came back to Beaver and practiced
medicine, he had a wide practice, ofter he would stay two or three days
if his patient was bad. He was killed near Elk Ranch, Arkansas in 1882
in making an arrest.
Uncle James, John and William enlisted at Pea Ridge under General
Price. When General Lee surrendered, all four of the brothers met at New
Orleans and walked to Beaver Arkansas. War is all that Sherman said it
was. Have heard my mother (who was a Johnstion before her marriage) say
that in the spring of 1865 that at times she did not have anything to
eat except wild greens, cooked without salt or seasoning of any kind.
Well as Diddie said in her book, I must wind this story up.
In the Walden Cenetary near Busch, Arkansas overlooking the beautiful
White River, lies the remains of these five brothers and one sister,
sleeping-sleeping in the land they loved and where the found wild game,
yet the never forgot Clinch River and East Tennessee.
Such was the end of my father, four uncles, one aunt whom I may truly
call the wisest, the justest, (in their way) and best of all men whom I
have ever known. The world was better because the lived.