Medal of Honor Marker Dedication and Menard-Hodges Mound Site Program to be Featured at Historical Society’s Summer Meeting

The Grand Prairie Historical Society will hold their summer quarterly meeting Thursday, July 17th at the Tichnor Volunteer Fire Dept. Community Room on Arkansas Hwy. 44. A potluck dinner will be available beginning at 6:00. Entrees will be provided. Attendees are encouraged but not required to bring side items. At 6:45 a new historical marker commemorating two Medal of Honor recipients with Tichnor ties, Gilbert Collier and Lloyd Burke, will be dedicated. The marker is co-sponsored by GPHS and the Buzz and Barbara Menard family of Gillett. At 7:00 Dr. John House, retired Arkansas Archeological Survey Station Archeologist at University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, will present a program, “What’s New in Archaeology in the Menard Mound Locality.” For more than 200 years, Menard Mound (renamed the Menard-Hodges site in 1980) in southern Arkansas County has attracted the attention of archaeologists and other scientific visitors.  In the late 1990s, the Arkansas Archeological Survey/Arkansas Archeological Society conducted extensive excavations at Menard-Hodges and at a late 1600s Quapaw cemetery on the nearby Lake Dumond site.

This was followed in the early 2000s by field studies sponsored in part by the Quapaw Nation of Oklahoma, at the Wallace Bottom site, the location of the late 1600s Quapaw village of Osotouy and the mid-1700s French Arkansas Post. House will tell how European objects, including glass beads and metal objects from the Lake Dumond graves help date the graves and also shed light on the Quapaws’ participation in the far-flung exchange networks that flourished in the North American interior for many decades prior to direct European contact. He will also present results from studies of animal and plant remains from Wallace Bottom that give clues about Quapaw and Colonial French diet and food preparation practices. The program will be followed by the organization’s summer business session. Please make plans to join the Society on July 17th for an evening of food, fellowship, commemoration, and history.     

The Historical Society is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of this region’s heritage. Four quarterly programs are held on the third Thursdays of January, April, July, and October in different venues around the county. In addition, members receive four newsletters and two award-winning journals. The Society’s officers are Linda Fischer, president; Gay Hampton Rusk, vice president; Raeann Braithwaite, treasurer; and Jessie Walsh, secretary. The board of directors are Claudia Haller Ahrens, Glenn Mosenthin, Bill Shrum, Tommy Strabala, Travis Trice, and Dr. Richard Wilson. Interested citizens are encouraged to join the Society’s efforts by sending $25 annual dues to Treasurer Raeann Braithwaite, P.O. Box 15, Almyra, AR 72003.   

Photo: Archaeologists and volunteers prepare to record a refuse pit dating to the 1700s at the Wallace Bottom site, November 2002