6. A place called Allis

Robert G. Davis and his double brother-in-law, William Nelson, brought quite an entourage of children, cousins and in-laws on their 1859 migration across the Mississippi to southeast Arkansas. 

The Davises and Nelsons likely chose the area around Monticello for their new home because there was already an Associate Reformed Presbyterian church there. “A.R.P. Pioneers always followed their church,” Hattie Bell writes. Robert G. Davis bought land along Ten Mile Creek, west of Monticello, virgin land thick with old-growth pines. William Nelson bought land along Wolf River.

Once again they were appropriating land abandoned by others. There had been Choctaw and Quapaw villages in that area as recently as 1805. The Caddos and the Osages were also common until conflict and the diseases brought by Europeans thinned their numbers. The Trail of Tears ran through Arkansas, further disrupting any natives’ attempt to hold onto tribal lands. As to specifics, all we know from family lore is that the Davises stayed that first winter in “shiftless log cabins” earlier settlers had abandoned.

The Davises and Nelsons stayed and built, beginning with a new church named Saline, for a nearby creek. Robert Davis, William Nelson and Richard Wright each paid $3.33 for five acres for a church and cemetery. Sarah Nisbet Davis, who died in 1861, was one of its first inhabitants. Then they set about clearing the woods, feeding its trees into William’s new sawmill. The settlers’ goal was to clear an acre every year, converting virgin forest into fields of corn and cotton. Robert built a horse-powered cotton gin, used by all the nearby growers, and sold his cotton in Monticello. William, always more ambitious, brought his cotton to the Mississippi, loaded it on barges and sold it in New Orleans, bringing back all kinds of city finery that made him the envy of his Arkansas neighbors.

They grew a community as well, and they called it Allis. “Uncle William’s lifelong dream of his Empire in the west, his Utopia, was becoming a reality,” writes Hattie Bell. At its prime, Allis had a post office, a boarding house, a general store and a stop on the railroad. Not much is left today except a road name and Old Saline Cemetery.

Robert G. and Margaret Nelson Davis had nine children, and as each of them married, he gave them land on which to build homes, along a road that came to be known as Davis Row. Though they were surely better off than many of their Arkansas neighbors, the Davises were a frugal people. They had a saying: If you have something you don’t need, save it for seven years. If you still don’t need it, save it for seven more. If you still don’t need it, give it away. 

Grandmother Sarah named the middle child of that bunch Robert Calvin Grier Davis, and decreed that he be called Grier, a name you’ll find scattered across the family tree in the generations that followed. Hattie Bell says he was Sarah’s favorite. “She never allowed him to be punished, hardly reproved. She never required him to eat cornbread nor to drink buttermilk, there was always a biscuit and sweet milk for Grier.” He was a pudgy kid who grew to be a heavily built man.

There were no public schools in Arkansas when Grier moved there at age 10, so he went to a subscription school: “a dollar a scholar per month.” He was a champion debater at one of these schools, memorably arguing in favor of women’s suffrage. He sang tenor in church and played cornet with the Saline Brass Band.

Grier met Allie Coleman in 1875 at a picnic commemorating the midnight ride of Paul Revere. She was the same spirited redhead who had faced down a Yankee soldier in Monticello during the war. He was “five feet ten, very black hair, deep blue eyes, and a medium heavy black mustache, which at that time declared him a grown-up.” They married the next year and soon had a house on Davis Row.

Robert died in 1880, at the center of a thriving community. Allis was, Hattie Bell writes, “Robert’s ideal colony,” where there was land enough for all his children. Grier grew and thrived in Allis, taking over the farm, sawmill and cotton gin. He was part-owner of the general store and an elder in Saline Church.

Grier and Allie filled their little house on Davis Row with children, 10 in all: Margaret Lily, Coleman Robert, Mary Anne, Ada Dell (who died in infancy), Oma Grier, Agnes Irma, Hattie Bell, Roy Lee and cousin Guy Davis, who was adopted into the family when his parents died.

But while Robert Davis wanted more land for his children, Grier and Allie looked at their growing brood and wanted something else: more education.