Brown family at Harmon School Earle H

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It was in the year 1883 that my grandparents, Jeff and Talitha Brown, moved to the community then known as Wildcat, later to be known as Harmon. They had come from Randolph County, Arkansas in 1875 accompanied by his sister and her husband, Belle and Haywood Thompson, and their father Abner Brown. Before them had come another sister of his, Adeline and her husband William Wright. They all lived for some years near Springdale, and it was there that their father Abner Brown died, about 1883. The Wrights moved to this neighborhood before my grandfather, who came in 1883. I do not know when the Haywood Thompsons moved to their home between Harmon and Sycamore school.

These three families had a total of nineteen children, and most of them married and raised families here or nearby, and by intermarriage included ten family names: Brown, Wright, Thompson, Mayes, Steele, Marrs, McCamey, Wood, Sullivan, and Roper. The next generation numbered about seventy individuals. Two other members of this family lived temporarily in the community: Frank Brown, who married Manda Wright (sister to William Wright) and Quince Brown.

My grandparents first home were the place later known as the Bement place, now owned by Carl and Ethel Wright. It was where Carl and Ethel's home is now that the schoolhouse stood, the school known as Wildcat School. My grandparents' later home was just north of Harmon's store, it was later owned by Ervin McCamey, and now by the Leslies. When they came their oldest son, Rolandus, was ten years old, and all of their eight children got most, or probably all of their schooling at the old location except Eph, who was still in school after the new building was built near the store called Harmon (actually the spelling of the name has been changed over the years, originally being spelled Harman after the Harman family who owned the store, and was spelled Harman when the post office was there). Jeff Brown served several years on the school board.

Though people had been moving into the area for many years before these families came here, these were still pioneering days, roads were cleared to the convenience of the neighborhood, and rambled along the creeks and over the hills at the less steep places, and many of the imprints of those old roads can still be pointed out. There were few post offices, Elm Springs being one of the older ones and Wheeler, serving the area in the Nineties. Robinson was an important trading point and post office. Many place names that were the location of stores or black smith shops, hence centers of their immediate communities, have passed from use and are all bug forgotten: Abney's Mill near While Oak, Pilgrims Mill on Clear Creek above Savoy, Blewford further down Wildcat Creek. Brush Creek was once known locally as Echo Dell, and Smith chapel is now Tontitown, and Thomas School was renamed Steele.

Five of Jeff and Talitha Brown's children married and lived in the Harmon community and sent their children to school here. Frank, Rolandus, Willie, Eph, and Lucy Brown Mayes. At least eighteen of the grandchildren were pupils of the school, and several of their great grandchildren also.

My mother, Ruth Stanley came to Arkansas with her aunt and uncle, John and Sarah Beasley, and attended school at Wildcat, as well as Thomas, and Smith Chapel.