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Below is a family biography included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Yell County, Arkansas published by Southern Publishing Company in 1891.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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Joseph Mitchell. Samuel and Harriet (Cavinder) Mitchell, parents of him whose name heads this sketch, claim Tennessee as the land of their birth and marriage, Samuel being born in 1815, and his wife in 1817, and were the parents of seven children. Our subject, being fifth in order of birth, was born in Hamilton County, March 20, 1849. The senior Mitchell, being induced by the fertility of the soil and the invigorating climate of the State of Arkansas, emigrated from his native heath in 1854, and settled in this county, where he entered 120 acres of land, built a log cabin and began to improve his land, which, later on, he sold, and bought 200 acres in the same neighborhood, which he cultivated and worked till his death, in 1865, his widow surviving him till 1867, when she passed to her long home, a member of the Baptist Church. Our subject, also a farmer, which calling he has followed all his life, is the owner of three fine tracts of land, 160 acres on his home place, twenty-eight cultivated, and two in orchard of some of the well-known varieties of peaches, apples and plums; has eighty acres on Dutch Creek, with fifty improved and two tenement houses, and 120 in this same neighborhood, lying about three miles from his homestead, and here he has fifty acres broken, a productive orchard, one tenement house, thirty head of cattle, five horses and a number of hogs. On February 21, 1881, he was wedded to Mrs. Margaret A. Gatlin, widow of William Gatlin, who had one daughter by her former marriage, Ursey. To them were born four children: Samuel, Harriet A., James (deceased) and Poley A. His wife and her daughter are members of the Baptist Church, and he is the township’s popular justice of the peace, having been elected to this office in 1872; socially is a Mason, belonging to Dutch Creek Lodge No. 269, wherein he has been worshipful master and filled the chair of senior warden and senior deacon for some time.

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This family biography is one of 124 biographies included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Yell County, Arkansas published in 1891.  For the complete description, click here: Yell County, Arkansas History, Genealogy, and Maps

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