Sketches of Orville Crawford Word

Old Fort Smith, 1817.



Orville Word was my 2nd Great Grandfather.

Orville Crawford WORD was the son of John Word. He was born in Mo or Ky., Oct. 12, 1812. He died in Washburn Valley, Sebastian Co., Arkansas, July 25, 1863. He was buried in the Veteran's Cemetary at Ft. Smith, Ark. and his grave has been lost. O.C. Word ran away from home when he was nine years old, and went to Little Rock, Ark. where he lived with a family named BIRD. He was married at age 17 to a Miss Mary RONE. When she died he married another Miss Drusilla Jane GROVES who was either the cousin or sister of his first wife. They became the parents of a daughter named Grace, who was raised by her grandfather in Pine Bluff, Ark.
O.C. Word was married a third time to Eliza Wilcox Hays, who was the great granddaughter of Daniel Boone. O.C. and Eliza were married in Mexico, Missouri on Sept. 2, 1843. Orville Crawford Word and Eliza Wilcox Hays became the parents of six children. The first two were girls, Emilee and Amelia, who died young. A boy Frank died in Ft. Smith, Ark. and is buried under a magnolia tree near the old house, which was later part of a church. They planted a magnolia tree for each child they had. The other three children were: John Howell, who was born in St. Louis, Feb. 2, 1852 and died April 22, 1922 at Washburn, Ark. He moved to Ft. Smith, Ark. with his parents in 1860. In 1869, he married Mollie Bell of Washburn and they were the parents of four children: Orville Charles Word, John Howell Word, Jr., Jennie (Mrs. Carl Wyman) and Mag (Mrs. Jim Colden) all of Ft. Smith, Ark. William Wade, was born at Ft. Smith, Ark., May 15, 1855, and died there Oct. 7, 1927. He was never married. Albert Pike was born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved to Ft. Smith, Ark. with his parents at age 7 months. His date of birth was Feb. 1, 1857 and he died Oct. 11, 1938 in Elk City, Okla. at age 81. He was married to Nancy Caroline ‘Callie” Gaddy at Greenwood, Ark. in Sebastian Co., July 8, 1883. She was born Sept. 6, 1866 in Newton, Mo. and died Jan. 29, 1946 in Elk City, Okla. at age 80 years. A.P. and "Callie" Word were the parents of Ira Belle Word Rice. They were the parents of seven living children: Sebe Word, born June 30, 1884 in Milltown, Ark., Clint Turner Word, Dec. 26, 1885, in Milltown, Ark., Porter Howell Word, born in Milltown, Ark., July 28, 1888 and died in Portersville, Calif., May 8, 1918. Irabelle Word, born in Milltown, Ark., Sept. 9, 1891, died April 23, 1980 in Okla. City, Okla. Ralph Rogers Word, born in Summers Mills, Bell Co., Texas, Oct. 13, 1895, died Nov. 22, 1938 in Elk City, Okla. Jewell Word, born in Edwardsville, Custer Co., Okla., April 8, 1901. Oaksie Cook Word, born in Elk City, Okla., Aug. 15, 1906. Besides these children Albert Pike and Callie Word lost three children at birth.
(This information from Lloyd M. Rice Jr., Uncle Jack)


Orville Crawford Word owned Trading Post up and along the Santa Fe Trail, first in St. Louis, then later in Fort Smith. Fort Smith was the last stop before entering Indian Territory, was along the Trail of Tears, and was a main route for the Butterfield Stage Co. between the east and west. This was, at the time, an ideal place to start a Trading Post.

Note: According to La Donna Word Woltman, Travis AFB, CA - "Orville Crawford left home and went to Little Rock where he married the Rone girls. He was a wealthy man and owned several stores and other property. In 1860 his personal property was valued at $20,000; real estate at $300,000. My records show Orville C. was born in Kentucky, but on 1860 census it shows he was born in Missouri. He and his wife moved from Missouri to Fort Smith to Missouri then back to Fort Smith. My gggrandfather was born in St. Louis but they moved back to Ft Smith when he was 6 mos old. O.C. married the first time around 17 years of age. I don't know what happened to his first 2 wives."

See below the early settlers of Calloway County, in the Nine Mile Prairie Township.

Calloway County Missouri
The courts divided the county into the following "old" townships from 1821 through 1838. Auxvasse Feb. 12,1821; Cote San Dessein 1821; Round Prairie May 14, 1821; Elizabeth [changed to Fulton 1825 ] May 15, 1821; Nine Mile Prairie May 15, 1821; Cedar November 13, 1824; Bourbon February 21, 1825; Liberty February 24, 1838.

Nine Mile Pairie was erected into a township May 15, 1821 with the following boundaries. "Beginning at the corner of the township line, between 47 and 48, of sections 2,3,34,35, then east in the said township line, until it strikes the western boundary of Auxvasse township, then south with said boundary four miles; then east until it strikes the eastern boundary of the county; then north as far as the jurisdiction of the county extends".

Early settlers in the township included the folllowing families: Anderson; Arnold; Board; Boone; Boswell; Breadwater; Burt; Callerson; Coil; Collins; Cress; Crump; Darby; Dillard; Driskill; Duncan; Everhart; Freeman; Fruite; Grant; Harding; Hamilton; Hays; Hobson; Hughes; Hutts; Jones; Kidwell; Lail; Larch; Manning; Martin; McMahan; Meteer; Overfelt, Palmer; Peters; Robinson; Sayers; Scholl; Todd; Wilburn; Wilkerson; Word; White; Winn and Wren.
Communities in the township included: Shamrock and Williamsburg,

This means that the Word family made the trip with Boone from Boonesborough Ky, or joined his family group somewhere along the way in 1799. Here is what I believe: Daniel Boone settled in Missouri in 1799, John Word would have been about 20 years old, came with his father and the rest of the family. His father would have been 40 to 50 years old at that time. I assume John Word did not marry till he got to Missouri, and may have married someone local. Their are also alot of HOWELL’s , in Calloway county, which may be where Orville and Eliza’s children all got their middle names. I have listed in my files, that Martha Ann, Orville's sister, was also born, 1817, in Missouri. In Uncle Jacks notes, it says of Orville's birth, Ky or Mo. So know one really knew for sure.

The Hays, Wilcox, Howell, Boone, and Word families all intermarried. They all lived together, and were all neighbors.

In 1811 the Indians had committed some outrages in the Boone's Lick settlements, in Howard County, and over near the Mississippi, on the Salt and Cuivre Rivers, in Pike and Lincoln. It was suspected that the perpetrators were the Indians of the Missouri. Gen. Wm. Clark, then in command of this department, made every exertion to detect them, but as the American forces were not yet organized, he did not succeed. Indian forays from the north were repeated, and during the year 1812 from Fort Madison (on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi, a little below the mouth of the Des Moines) to St. Charles, settlers were murdered and their homes destroyed by the savages.
At last Gov. Benjamin Howard went to St. Charles and ordered Col. Kibbe, who commanded the militia of that country, to call out a portion of the men who were in requisition to march at a moment's warning. He organized a company of rangers for continuous service with Capt. James Callaway, a grandson of Daniel Boone, as captain. This company was made up principally of St. Charles county men, all hardy woodsmen, active, skillful and bold. At intervals this company scoured the country from Salt river to the Missouri, and performed invaluable service.
Gov. Howard also established a small fort on the Mississippi in St. Charles County, which was garrisoned by a company of regulars from Bellfontaine under the command of a Lieut. Mason, and for him was called Fort Mason. Fort Clemson, on Loutre Island, was built at the same time. Throughout the settlements the pioneers themselves built a number of block houses, or so called forts. There was Daniel M. Boone's Fort, in Darst's Bottom, St. Charles county; Howell's Fort, on Howell's prairie; Pond's Fort, on the Dog Prairie; Hountz's Fort, eight miles west of St. Charles; Zumwalt's Fort, near O'Fallon; Castillo's Fort, near Howell's Prairie; Kennedy's Fort, near Wright City; Callaway's Fort, near Marthasville, and Wood's Fort at Troy. But for these establishments and that the whites in this part would either have been driven out of the country or exterminated.

"Hell on the Border", Ft. Smith, Arkansas

The scrappy border town of Fort Smith grew up slowly around the walls of a small fort established in late 1817 on a high bluff overlooking the junction of the Arkansas and Poteau rivers. The site was familiar to hunters and trappers because it was the location for annual trade rendezvous' between frontiersmen and Native Americans. Named for General Thomas Smith at the federal garrison in St. Louis, the tiny outpost was originally built to promote peace between the warring Osage and Cherokee Indian tribes.
Because of its unique geographical position - straddling the border between what became the state of Arkansas and what was known then as "Indian Territory" in present-day Oklahoma - Fort Smith by the mid-19th century was feared as "Hell on the Border," the gateway between "civilization" and the untamed West. Through this gate passed trappers canoeing upriver; Cherokee Indians on their fateful "Trail of Tears" journey; Forty-Niners seeking gold in California; the Butterfield stagecoaches linking St. Louis to Santa Fe; Confederate and Union troops skirmishing in the Civil War; outlaws seeking freedom across the border; and even cowboys and ranchers headed for Texas.
During this period, bustling Fort Smith attracted people who later made brief marks on the pages of history - future president Zachary Taylor; Civil War general Benjamin Bonneville; "Hangin' Judge" Isaac C. Parker, the man credited with restoring law and order to the area; his feared hangman George Maledon; outlaws Cherokee Bill, Belle Starr and the Rufus Buck gang; and "Miss Laura" Ziegler, an enterprising frontier "madame."

The First Fort Smith
On Christmas day, 1817, soldiers of the U.S. Army formally established the first Fort Smith. Isolated on the edge of the American Frontier, these men, under the command of Major William Bradford, were charged with keeping the peace between the Cherokee and Osage tribes.
Officially operational for only seven years, the first Fort Smith marked the beginning of Fort Smith's eighty year history as an agent of Federal Indian Policy.

The Second Fort Smith
The second Fort Smith was established by an act of Congress in 1838, two years after Arkansas gained statehood. Unwanted by the army, the fort was initially designed as a massive fortification. Construction of the garrison took eight years due to labor difficulties, budget overruns, and other reasons. When finally completed in 1846, less than half of the original number of structures were built. The fortification wall, intended to be twelve feet high, varied from six to twelve feet in height; cannon platforms at the corners of the fort were never completed, instead several were converted into warehouses.
The second fort gained a purpose in the 1850s as the "Motherpost of the Southwest," supplying military forts further to the West. The fort was a focal point of Civil War operations in the region, as both armies prized the facility and its location.
At the end of the Civil War, the post's operational days were numbered; the facility did not age well, and within five years, both Officer's Quarters were destroyed in fires. In the summer of 1871, U.S. Army troops leave Fort Smith for the final time

The Trail of Tears and Native American History
Fort Smith's history is strongly tied to the history of the removal of the five tribes, better known as "The Trail of Tears." The soldiers of the first Fort Smith were sent West to keep the peace between the incoming Cherokees and the Osage. The stockades fort was abandoned by the army and relocated prior to the forced removal. The second Fort Smith supplied the newly-relocated tribes as well as other military posts in the Indian Territory. The federal court for the Western District of Arkansas had the task of enforcing federal law in the Indian Territory in the decades following the Civil War.


[The following are 1880 census. The Word's, John H. Jr., Eliza, and Albert Pike all lived next door to each other. You will notice that Albert Pike was married first to Mary Faister, born in Ms, they are both 23 years old. He did not marry Nancy Caroline Gaddy till 1863. You will notice that there is a Jane Bowers living with Albert and Mary. I suspect this is Mary's sister. Eliza is watching the 9 year old daughter of Jane, her name is Minnie. Alberts first wife was probably ill at this time and died. It says Jane is 35 years old and widowed, she may have lost her husband in the Civil War. Daniel Rice]



1880 United States Census
Eliza WORD Self W Female W 56 MO Keeping House KY KY
William WORD Son S Male W 25 AR Farming MO MO
Minnie BOWERS Other S Female W 9 AR At School AR AR
LDS Source Information:
Census Place Washburn, Sebastian, Arkansas
Family History Library Film 1254057
NA Film Number T9-0057
Page Number 684A

1880 United States Census
Albert P. WORD Self M Male W 23 MO Farming MO MO
Mary WORD Wife M Female W 23 MS Keeping House --- ---
Jane BOWERS Other W Female W 35 AR --- ---
LDS Source Information:
Census Place Washburn, Sebastian, Arkansas
Family History Library Film 1254057
NA Film Number T9-0057
Page Number 684B

1880 United States Census
John H. WORD Self M Male W 28 MO Farming
Mary WORD Wife M Female W 30 AR Keeping House TN TN
Orville C. WORD Son S Male W 7 AR At School MO AR
Jennie WORD Dau S Female W 5 AR At Home MO AR
John N. R. WORD Son S Male W 3 AR At Home MO AR
LDS Source Information:
Census Place Washburn, Sebastian, Arkansas
Family History Library Film 1254057
NA Film Number T9-0057
Page Number 684A



[ I believe my Great Grandfather, Albert Pike Word, was named after the famous Albert Pike. He can be described as “a pioneer, a crusader for justice for Native Americans, a musician, a reformer, a journalist, a poet, a philosopher, a prominent Washington lawyer, and a Civil War general.” He shaped and directed the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, USA, for 32 years (1859-1891) as its Sovereign Grand Commander. He published a book in 1871, "Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry", of which I find somewhat controversial. Some of the passages in this book refer to Lucifer, of which I could only raise my eyebrows in disbelief. Albert Pike was a very talented man in many areas. His contribution to our country is monumental. Daniel Rice].

Song of the Week
Why am I playing this song this week. Because it is one of my brothers favorites. Enjoy!!....Vanessa Carlton "A Thousand Miles".