Arkansas Settlement Patterns

I chose to do research on my great, great, great, grandmother who lived during the eighteen hundreds. She settled in North Fork, Arkansas. After many hours of searching, I discovered the population in the eighteen hundreds was 1,128.79 while the town’s population in two thousand and fifteen is about 550 residents. I think this could because of the differential change in jurisdictional boundaries. My ancestor settled in a rural community.
I believe the geographic features did affect the settlement patterns because during this time period most of the early settlers who came to Arkansas were farmers. As a result, they wanted soil with good vegetation which would produce more crops. I wasn’t able to find any churches or cemeteries on either on my maps. I found this a little a

For instance, lead mining brought a lot of jobs to the area as well as coal mining. I found something unique about each map that I studied. The historic map showed where Indian Territory was in the eighteen hundreds while the modern map showed the highways and interstates. According Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, it said, “Indians supplied much of what government Arkansas enjoyed during that period during which France and then Spain claimed the Mississippi River’s west bank. Theoretically, French and Spanish commanders at Arkansas Post enjoyed considerable political military, and juridical authority. They presumed to regulate trade, commercial hunting, and Indian relations. But the settler population was too small, scattered, and obstreperous, and soldiers too few, for the power to be very meaningful. Moreover, the Quapaw and Osage refused to be governed by European law. The Quapaw had made themselves too essential to French survival- and the Osage were simply too powerful- for either to be bullied into submission.”