My Genealogy Hound

William D. Hagins has been identified with the progress and development of Cleveland County, Ark., since 1857, and in the conduct of his farm, which he has earned by the sweat of his brow, and which comprises a tract of 450 acres, he has been very successful, and has met with substantial results. His land is very fertile and well improved, and 160 acres are in an excellent state of cultivation. He was born in York District, S. C, April 28, 1830, and is a son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Dunlap) Hagins, also natives of York District, born in 1801 and 1803, and died in York District and Cleveland County, Ark., in 1849 and 1881, respectively. They were married in their native county, and there made their home until the father’s death. In 1857 the mother, with three sons and one daughter, came to Arkansas, and located in Cleveland County, or what is now Cleveland County, and settled on the farm on which William D. is now living. Joseph Hagins was a successful planter, and a man of prominence in the county in which he resided. He was a Royal Arch Mason, and in his political views a Democrat. Only two of his six children are now living: Susan J. (wife of C. L. Carmical, a farmer of the county), and William D. Those deceased are John A. (who died in Cleveland County, Ark., in 1864, aged thirty-one years), David M. (who died in Austin Tex., in 1852, at the untimely age of nineteen years), James T. (who was killed in the battle of Chickamauga, being a soldier in the Fifth Arkansas Confederate Infantry), and Benjamin T. (who died when a lad in South Carolina). The youth of William D. Hagins was spent in South Carolina, and he finished a liberal education at Ebenezerville, S. C. Upon the death of his father, he, being the eldest of the family, took the management of his father’s plantation into his own hands, and helped his mother to settle up the estate. In 1857, as above stated, they came to Arkansas with their stock, wagons and slaves, and settled in Cleveland County. During the war he was on detail duty all the time as a miller for the Confederate army, but shortly before the termination of hostilities, his mill, which was one of the best in the State, was destroyed by fire. He lost heavily in other ways also, but has since retrieved his fortunes in a great measure. In 1856 his marriage with Miss Lizzie K. Huff, a daughter of Lebanon Huff, was celebrated. She was born in 1831, and died at Hot Springs, Ark., in 1882. She left no family. Mr. Hagins is, as was his wife, a member of the Missionary Baptist Church, and he is a Democrat and a member of the Masonic fraternity.