My Genealogy Hound

Albert M. Pope, a prominent citizen of Cross County, was born near where the village of Vanndale is now situated, and in what was then (1861) Poinsett County, and is the only child of Madison and Julia F. (McClaran) Pope. Madison Pope was a native of Southampton County, Va., where he spent his youth and where he received his education. In 1852 Mr. Pope immigrated to Arkansas, and with his two brothers, Oswald and Riddick, bought and entered lands to the amount of 2,000 acres, after which they formed a partnership in the mercantile business in Memphis, which they continued until 1860, doing a large business. At that time the war coming on, and attendant circumstances, freed their slaves and left them with nothing but land. Mr. Pope was married in 1858, to Julia F. McClaran, of Macon, Fayette County, Tenn., a lady of education, who has taught school in the immediate neighborhood of Vanndale, for over the space of twenty years. Mr. Pope died in 1862, leaving to his widow and infant son a large tract of land, and the much better legacy—a good name. He was one of those men whose deeds live, after they have departed this life. His brother Oswald, senior partner of the firm, died in 1879, while Riddick survives, and is an honorable member of the State senate. Mrs. Julia F. Pope, after remaining a widow for twelve .years, was married in 1874, to J. C. Brookfield, her present husband, with whom she now resides in the town of Jonesboro, Craighead County. A. M. Pope remained on the farm with his mother, till about eighteen years of age. He then clerked, respectively, in the towns of Wittsburg and Harrisburg, for about three years, after which he returned home and engaged in farming and stock-raising, till the removal of his mother to Jonesboro, when he built a neat and substantial residence in Vanndale, where he now resides, engaged in the drug business with Dr. T. D. Hare.