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Submitted: 1/20/09 • Approved: 1/22/09 • Last Updated: 8/8/12 • R139161-G0-S3
Birth:1 Aug 1830
Death:22 Sep 1871
All notes found by Nancy Feroe:
The Arkansas Gazette
July 30, 1871 - Page 1, Column 6
James Reece and Andrew Jackson Reece
The Bentonville Democrat, of the
22nd, says; An affray occurred in
the western part of this county,
near the head waters of Honey Creek,
on Monday last, between two parties
named Reece and Pierce, who lived in
the same neighborhood. It seems that
some time ago there had been some
difficulty at school between the
children of the two families, which
has caused ill feelings to spring up
between the older members. On Monday
last some ten or eleven men were
engaged in threshing wheat in a
field near the residence of James
Reece, the father of some half dozen
sons, who were present. About nine
o'clock in the morning, six men, four
of the Pierce family, one named Manis
and one named Williams, came into the
field and stood around the thrasher
near an hour. All of a sudden without
any intimation, George Pearce struck
Andrew J. Reece. with a pitchfork.
James Reece, the father, struck
Pierce with a grain shovel, and then
father and son closed in with Pierce
in a ground scuffle. William then drew
a six shooter and shot James Reece in
the back of the head, inflicting a
dangerous and it is feared fatal wound,
and also shot A.J. Reece, wounding him
slightly. Pierce then regained his feet,
and immediately shot A.J. Reece again,
killing him instantly. A general fight
then ensued in which two others, one on
each side were slightly wounded. The
assailants then retreated. When some
thirty yards distant George Pierce
turned around and shot back at the
crowd, and at the same instant he
received a shot from one at the
thresher from the effects of which
he died the next day. The assailants
have not yet been arrested. Those are
the facts as they were given to us by
an eye-witness.
*********
They were not moved from a regular
cemetery but from the location they
were buried at on Honey Creek. The
family buried the two men first where
they were killed on Honey Creek. When
the railroad came through in the
1890's, they were buried in the
railroad's right-of-way so the RR wrote
to the widow, Polly (Southren) Reece,
who had moved back to Gilmer Co., GA
and asked permission to move them.
She directed them to be moved to the
Mt. Enterprise (also known as Georgia)
cemetery because George Pierce, the
man who killed her husband and son,
was buried in the Russell Cemetery
located behind Steve Meek's house on
Hwy. 72 at Russell Corner Rd.
When Andrew Jackson Reece's widow,
Sarah (Darnell) Reece died, she was
buried back beside A.J. Reece and his
father. Sarah's parents are buried
behind Gordon Kara's house at the
corner of Kane Rd. and Shady Grove Rd.
I found out from a lady in California,
Carole Littrel Brown, that most of the
people who are buried in the old
Backbone Cemetery down by the
Washington County line are also
related to the Darnell's. That one is
really hard to get to.
Contributed on 1/20/09 by flwillingham
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Record #: 139161