My Genealogy Hound

Brian M. Stephens, intimately associated with the affairs of this county as farmer, ginner and stock raiser of Crockett Township, was a son of Dr. Brian M. Stephens and Julia Ann (Earnest) Stephens, natives of Virginia and Tennessee, respectively. They lived in the Old Dominion until our subject was about nine years of age, then moving to Tennessee. Dr. Stephens was also a son of Brian M. Stephens, a wealthy Virginia planter, who was a son of one of the early colonists of that State. Brian M. Stephens, Jr., was born in Frederick County, Va., in 1839, as the second son of a family of ten children, three of whom are still living. He received a good common-school education, and had just entered Washington College, Tennessee, at the breaking out of the war, when, leaving his studies, he enlisted in the Confederate army, in Company A of the Third Tennessee Infantry, known after the fall of Vicksburg as the Third Tennessee Mounted Infantry. He participated in the battles of Bull Run, Perryville, siege of Vicksburg, and a number of others. In 1866 he came to Arkansas, and in 1869 was married to Miss Martha J. Ferguson, daughter of Hon. Austin H. Ferguson, and a sister of William F. Ferguson, whose biography appears in this work. Mr. Stephens soon engaged in farming near Crockett’ s Bluff, and now has a farm of 160 acres, with about 100 acres under cultivation, also owning a good steam gin. He and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He belongs to the I. O. O. F.