My Genealogy Hound

Capt. Parker C. Ewan is a member of that substantial and successful law firm of Ewan & Thomas, of Clarendon. The senior member of the firm, Capt. Ewan, was born in New Jersey, in 1837, and is a son of John and Sylvia H. (Hankins) Ewan, who were also born in that State, the former in 1800, and the latter in 1804. After their marriage they moved to Clermont County, Ohio, in which place Mr. Ewan died of cholera, in 1849. His wife died in Cincinnati, Ohio, twenty-eight years later. He was a farmer, and was a son of Evan Ewan, a native of New Jersey, who died there, at about the age of eighty years, having been an iron manufacturer by trade. He was a captain in the Revolutionary War, and traced his ancestors back to Sir Raleigh Ewan, a Scotchman. Many of the family now in this country have changed the name to Ewing. Richard Hankins, the maternal grandfather, was of Irish extraction, a farmer by occupation, a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and spent his entire life in the State of New Jersey. The immediate subject of this biography is one of a family of ten children, all of whom are living, with the exception of one, who was killed by a train in Texas, in January, 1888, and in youth he became familiar with farm life by assisting his father. Until twelve years of age he attended the common country schools, then entered the Bantam (Ohio) High School, and two years later the College Hill Academy, near Cincinnati, but in 1854 left school and went South, and for a short time was engaged in flat boating on the Mississippi River. In 1855 he began teaching school, in Phillips County, Ark., at which time the country was in a very wild and unsettled condition, the timber being full of wild animals, and at one time he stood in his school-house door and shot a panther. In 1857 he came to Monroe County, and taught school until the opening of the Civil War, then dropped the ferrule to take up the musket, and joined Company E, First Arkansas Infantry, afterward the Fifteenth Arkansas, commanded by Col. (afterward Gen.) Cleburne. His first experience in warfare was in the battle of Shiloh, and still later he was made captain of his company, and participated in the battles of Richmond and Perryville (Ky.) and Murfreesboro, (Tenn.), when he was again severely wounded, and was compelled to give up his command. After recovering he was placed in command of the post at West Point, Ga., was made provost marshal, and when the news of the final surrender reached him he was on post duty at Macon, Ga. After his return to Monroe County he farmed one year, then began filling the duties of county clerk, to which position he had been elected in 1866, serving with ability for two years. His first experience in the practice of law was with Jeremiah Marston, and in 1872 the firm became Marston, Ewan & Bobo, which continued until the death of Mr. Marston, about ten years later. From that time until 1886 Mr. Ewan continued alone, and was then associated with Mr. Palmer for two years, after which Mr. Thomas became a member of the firm. Mr. Palmer withdrew in 1888, and the firm is now Ewan & Thomas, one of the strongest and most thorough law firms in Eastern Arkansas. Mr. Ewan was county attorney from 1868 to 1872, and is one of the leading members of the Democratic party in his county and State. He has been a delegate from Monroe County to nearly every Democratic State convention, and has never voted outside of Monroe County. He has been a member of the A. F. & A. M. since 1862, Cache Lodge No. 235, and he also belongs to the K. of P., Cowan Lodge No. 39. By his own indomitable energy and methodical business habits he has become one of the wealthiest men of the State, and is the owner of about 70,000 acres of land in Monroe, Phillips, Lee, Arkansas and Prairie Counties. He has thirty-five improved farms, ranging from eighty to 1,600 acres each, and also owns seven cotton-gins, two saw-mills, and one-half interest in a railroad, all of which he has earned since the war, and, unlike many wealthy men, he can truthfully say that he never intentionally wronged a man out of a dollar. That he is one of the honored and trusted men of the county can readily be seen. He owns the Monroe County Sun, a newspaper which he founded in 1876, and has since controlled. In 1865 he was united in marriage to Miss M. L. Rayston, who was born in Mississippi, and left her husband a widower in 1868, with a daughter to care for, named Carrie L., now the wife of W. N. Johnson. Mr. Ewan celebrated his second marriage in 1870, his wife being Maggie H., a sister of his first wife, also born in Mississippi. After bearing him one child, who is now deceased, he was again left a widower, January 4, 1872. September 21, 1874, he married his third wife, Julia C., a daughter of Prof. Frank S. Connor, of Abbeville, S. C. His wife is a Methodist, and has borne him four children, Parker C., Jr., aged eleven years, being the only one living.