My Genealogy Hound

William A. Council. The village of Council Bend was named after Redwick Council, who built the first house in that locality, and who was the grandfather of the subject of this biography. His son, Simeon, was born in North Carolina, in 1805, and removed to Arkansas in April, 1822, settling in Crittenden County for a short time and then removed to Walnut Bend, on the Mississippi River, being married in St. Francis County, in 1827, to Rebecca Lane, who was born in Alabama in April, 1811. He died in April, 1848, and his wife in 1879. They were the parents of eleven children, three of whom are still living: Allen (a farmer of St. Francis County), Mary J. (now Mrs. McKay, of Hood County, Tex.), and William A. The latter was reared in this county and began life for himself as a farmer at the age of nineteen. He was born here on December 28, 1847, and was married, February 22, 1874, to Miss Anna M. Smith, who died in July of that year. The following April, Miss Elizabeth Filingim became his wife, who died April 22, 1881, leaving one child, now deceased. Mr. Council’s third matrimonial venture was in February, 1883, to Miss Margaret L. Hubbard, of Alabama nativity, who died two years later, having borne one child, that died in infancy. He joined the Union army at the age of sixteen, enlisting in the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin Infantry, in which he served until the close of the war, participating in the battles of Buzzard’s Roost, Big Shanty, Kenesaw Mountain, Atlanta, and a number of others. After the conflict Mr. Council went to Wisconsin, and remained two years, then returning to Arkansas and settling in St. Francis County. He is now engaged in the timber business in connection with farming, and owns 160 acres on the St. Francis River, which is very fertile and well timbered.