The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [35]
Another example, not unlike the matter of liquor, involved religion. It was no secret to Sarah or to Lizzie Swain that Jacob Ingledew felt that religion was a useless expenditure of time and thought. He was not exactly blasphemous, and took the Lord’s name in vain only under severe duress, as when for example he discovered razorback shoats nursing off his cow’s teats, but he did not believe, as nearly everybody else did, that our words and deeds on this earth will determine our standard of living in the hereafter. In fact, he did not believe in any sort of hereafter. For well over a hundred years, down to the present day, Ozark women would nag their men on these two subjects: whiskey and religion, instilling God knows what a fabric of guilt and evasion; and few of these men would have the solace of the knowledge that Jacob had, that since there is no logical earthly reason for not drinking, and no logical earthly reason for being religious, the nagging was invalid and therefore would be disregarded.
…But not quite. Try as he would, Jacob could not quite disregard the nagging of Sarah and her mother. He knew there was nothing he could say to turn it off. If he went outside, they would follow him. So he did more than just go outside: he left town. The nagging of Sarah and her mother may be credited for Jacob’s discovery that there was indeed a people to the north.
He went north from Stay More less than six miles, down the Little Buffalo River, before coming upon a settlement that was even larger than Stay More. Larger, at least, by one house, for there were nine of them, ranging from porchless, windowless cabins more primitive than the Ingledew place to square-hewed log houses more advanced than the Swain place. Jacob approached the most elaborate of these latter, was hailed by its dogs and then greeted by its owner, John Bellah, who, Jacob learned, had come to the Ozarks even before himself. The name of the settlement was Mount Parthenon, given to it by a neighbor, Thomas K. May, “the Bible man,” and for the time being the small log trading post operated by John Bellah was also the “courthouse” for the county.
“County?” said Jacob Ingledew to John Bellah.
“Yeah, we’ve done been declared a county,” declared John Bellah. “They cut off the whole southeast part of Carroll County and let us have it.”
“What’s the name of this here county?” Jacob wanted to know.
“Newton,” Bellah informed him. Jacob knew that this was a shortened form of “new town,” and he was sorry that the new town apparently wasn’t his own. But Bellah explained that it was named after, or in honor of, Thomas Willoughby Newton, who was the United States Marshal for Arkansas.
“Never heared of ’im,” Jacob said.
“Whar ye from, stranger?” John Bellah wanted to know.
Jacob Ingledew was sore distressed and perplexed and aggerpervoked. To find that he lived in a county, in the first place, and then, in the second place, to be called “stranger” not six miles from his own dooryard, was a demeaning affront. His first impulse was to strike John Bellah down on the spot, but then he reflected that a wiser course of action might be to secede Stay More from the rest of the county, or perhaps, better yet, if more settlers came in and made Stay More larger than Mount Parthenon, to declare Stay More the county seat.
“I’m Mayor of Stay More,” he informed John Bellah.
“Never heared of it,” Bellah declared.
“Second largest town in Newton County and you aint heared of it?” Jacob demanded. A thought suddenly occurred to him: