My Genealogy Hound

Richard N. Counts is a general merchant and cotton buyer of Clarendon, and although he has only been established in business at this place since October, 1888, he has deservedly acquired the reputation of being a safe, thorough and reliable man of business. He is a native of the State, having been born in Independence County, in 1851, and he is the youngest of eight children born to the marriage of Richard N. Counts and Mary A. Tucker, who were born, reared and married in the State of Missouri, afterward removing to Independence County, where the father followed the occupation of husbandry, and died in 1858. His wife died when our subject was about one year old, and after his father’s death he was left to depend on his own resources, and from 1860 has made his home in Prairie and Monroe Counties, receiving a common-school education. For about six years he followed book-keeping and clerking for B. F. Johnson, and the following five years worked in the same capacity for J. M. Wheelock, by this means acquiring sufficient means to enable him to engage in his present business, which has proven a decided success. His property has been acquired by his own exertions, and in addition to his store he has a fine farm of 320 acres, of which 160 acres are in a good state of cultivation. He is a Democrat, casting his first vote for Tilden, in 1876, and in March, 1885, he was elected to fill an unexpired term of county treasurer, and in 1886 was re-elected, serving in all nearly four years. He has been a member of the A. F. & A. M., Cache Lodge at Clarendon, also the K. of P. and the K. of H., and for several years has been financial reporter of the latter order. He also belongs to the A. O. U. W., and he and his wife, whom he married in 1885, and whose maiden name was Lucy Bonner, are members of the Methodist Church. They have one daughter. Mrs. Counts was born in North Carolina, and is a daughter of W. H. Bonner, a Tennesseean, who came to Monroe County, Ark., in 1859, and here died in 1888, having been an assessor and farmer, his wife’s death occurring in 1881. Mr. Counts had previously married in 1873 Fannie E., a daughter of James H. and Eleanor Branch. She was born in Tennessee, and died in 1879, at Clarendon, leaving two children, a son and a daughter. Mr. Counts is of Irish descent, and has a brother and two sisters living: William A. (a hardware merchant of Little Rock), L. J. (Mrs. Meeks, of Brinkley) and Linnie (Mrs. Loving, of Pine Bluff).