Independence County, Arkansas: History
Independence County was the ninth county formed in the Arkansas Territory, and the fourth created after the territory itself was established. The act creating the county was signed by territorial governor James Miller in October 1820. As originally formed, the county was far larger than its present boundaries, extending from the mouth of the Little Red River to the Missouri line and encompassing all or part of the present-day counties of Fulton, Baxter, Sharp, Izard, Stone, Cleburne, Van Buren, White, Jackson, and Woodruff, each of which was later separated from Independence County as the region's population grew.
The area had been inhabited by Native Americans for at least ten millennia before European settlement, and more than 1,200 archaeological sites have been recorded within the modern county by the Arkansas Archeological Survey. Archaeologist Clarence B. Moore excavated several of the county's sites in the early 20th century, including the Little Turkey Hill site near the Black River. The Mississippian-era culture identified along this stretch of the White River is known as the Greenbrier Phase, named for a large town site located near Batesville. The Osage ceded the surrounding territory to the United States by treaty in 1808, and the Cherokee, who also held land in the area for a period, ceded it back to the federal government in 1828.
Batesville, the county seat, was settled at the site of a trading post at the mouth of Poke (or Polk) Bayou on the White River, where a branch of the Southwest Trail crossed the river. A post office was opened at the site under the name Poke Creek on November 7, 1820, with the county's first sheriff, Charles Kelly, serving as postmaster; the office was formally renamed Batesville, after territorial congressional delegate James Woodson Bates, on January 7, 1824. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson appointed Jesse Bean, a resident of the county, to command a newly formed cavalry company tasked with patrolling the western frontier; the unit, largely made up of Independence County men and known as "Bean's Rangers," was later described by Washington Irving in his book A Tour on the Prairies. The county provided two infantry companies to the United States Army during the Mexican–American War; one of two county men killed at the Battle of Buena Vista was Andrew Porter, a local newspaper editor, who was memorialized with a monument erected in Batesville.
Independence County has been the home of three Arkansas governors: Thomas S. Drew, Elisha Baxter, and William R. Miller.