Jefferson County, Arkansas: History
The area now known as Jefferson County was occupied by the Quapaw when Henri de Tonti established Arkansas Post in 1686. De Tonti claimed the area for Louis XIV, King of France.
In March 1819, Robert Crittenden was appointed secretary of the Arkansas Territory. That same year, Joseph Bonne, traveling upstream on the Arkansas River from Arkansas Post, built a cabin on a "high bluff covered with pine trees" on the river's south bank. Several years later, James Scull, also from Arkansas Post, established a tavern and small inn on the river's north bank, across from what would become the site of Pine Bluff. Five years later, Secretary Crittenden convinced the remaining Quapaw to sign a treaty with the U.S. government relinquishing what remained of their tribal lands.
Steamboat travel led to expanding settlement, bringing to the area such men as French émigré Antoine Barraqué, Indian trader and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars (a township in northwest Jefferson County and Pine Bluff's principal east–west street are both named for him), and brothers James T. and John Pullen (main thoroughfares are both named for them). On November 2, 1829, Territorial Governor John Pope—Crittenden's successor—approved the establishment of Jefferson County. Though Bonne's cabin was initially used; by August 1832, "Pine Bluff Town" became the permanent county seat."
The land in the county was developed as large cotton plantations, with fronts on the river for transportation. The plantations were dependent on the labor of enslaved African Americans, who comprised a majority of the population in the county well before the American Civil War. After the war, planters in Jefferson County gradually resumed cotton cultivation and processing. The economy was driven by cotton and the Delta area was highly productive.
Because of the county's large African-American population, it was a center of Black political power in the decades after the Civil War before Jim Crow eliminated nearly all Black participation in politics. Twenty-two different African Americans from Jefferson County were elected to the Arkansas state legislature between 1871 and 1893, by far the most from any county.
In 1886, Jefferson County produced 55,120 bales of cotton, the most in Arkansas, and the second-most throughout the South. Transportation companies serving the county at the time included the Cotton Belt Route, the St. Louis – San Francisco Railway, Missouri Pacific, the Arkansas River Packet Company, the Wiley Jones Street Car Lines, and the Citizens Street Railway Company.