Dobyville Arkansas

Writings reveal westward move of families, churches, even towns

One group of families spent 99 days traveling to its final destination

By: Louise Pettus

The westward migration of whole communities of this area began in the 1820s and increased every decade before the Civil War. Sometimes it was an extended family or a substantial portion of the congregation of a church that decided to pick up and go. Some of them did extensive group planning on just how they could get themselves, their household goods and stock all the way to a new home. Others simply relied on a chosen leader to get them there.

Fortunately for us, years later, someone wrote the story of how they managed to travel hundreds of miles, fording rivers and dealing with all the vagaries of travel in those days.

One of the stories was about a group of 14 or 15 families who lived in the Neely's Creek community of York and Chester counties. They got together on a Simpson farm near Thanksgiving of 1852. (Late fall after the crops had been harvested was invariably the time to set out.) All belonged to Neely's Creek ARP (Associate Reformed Presbyterian) church. They had 10 surnames: Crawford, Davis, Kenmore, Lathan, Leslie, Milholland, Simpson, Stewart, Thompson and Wylie.

They traveled by wagons pulled by mules. There is no record of the number of wagons needed, but it must have been a large number.

It was remembered that they carried seed with them to plant their first crop in land that had never been plowed. They carried plows and tools and materials they would need if the wagons broke down (like spare wagon wheels). They even managed to haul a cotton gin over the mountains.

No house would await them. They would have to take along enough supplies to keep them alive until their houses could be constructed.

The group arrived in Bradley County, Ark., in March of 1853 after 99 nights of camping out. It was remembered later that there were two Leslie families in the party and that one of them refused to travel on Sundays and arrived before the one that did travel on Sundays.

As so often happened, they named their new home after the old. Families that had been members of Neely's Creek ARP were from the communities of Santuck, Leslie and Neely's Creek. They named their new Bradley County settlement Santuck, Ark., a community that survived by that name at least until 1923.

In September 1853, John Doby placed an ad in the Lancaster Ledger with the heading "King's Bottoms for Sale." The ad read in part: "... on Catawba River about eight miles from Fort Mills depot containing 1,300 acres, sixty or seventy acres of which is first-rate bottom land. Half the balance is in wood land, well adapted to the culture of cotton and grain. On the premises are a good dwelling house and a well of the best water, also a new Gin House and all necessary out buildings."

A year later, he was still advertising, this time referring to the King's Bottoms, "so termed by the Indians for its extent and fertility as best bottom land on the Catawba river."

It wasn't until 1856 that Doby managed to sell the land and move to Clark County, Ark. Not only did Doby's children go with him, reminiscent of his grandparents' removal from Virginia to the Waxhaws, but he was also accompanied by a large number of Griers from Steele Creek in Mecklenburg County and also Whites, Boyces, Nisbets and McGills from York and Lancaster counties.

One descendant wrote that there were about 120 wagons in the wagon train when it crossed the N.C. mountains into Tennessee.

In central Arkansas, the Carolinians built a town called Dobyville. They named their church the Carolina Presbyterian Church, later called Dobyville Presbyterian Church until it closed its doors in 1930. One of the tombstones in the abandoned cemetery reads: "John M. Doby / 18 January 1801-29 May 1878."