Tebbetts Journals Come Home to Fayetteville

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Fayetteville attorney Charles M. Kester and his wife Cheryl donated 30 notebooks handwritten by Judge Jonas Tebbetts to the University Libraries on Monday, June 21. The Kesters acquired the notebooks last May after a fierce bidding war on eBay. The collection includes the account and memorandum books and two diaries written by Tebbetts, the Civil War-era owner of the Headquarters House on Dickson Street.

The journals were posted for electronic auction by John Smith, a historic documents dealer from Franklin, Mass. Charles Kester said he jumped into the bidding fray with the single determination to bring the journals back to Fayetteville. He declared, I thought if someone is going to study Fayetteville history, they should come here to do it."

After reading local reporter Charlie Alison's article about the eBay auction of the journals in The Morning News, Kester called Judy Ganson, director for collection management services and systems at the University of Arkansas Libraries and interim director for Special Collections. The two discussed Kester bidding for the items on behalf of the University Libraries.

Special Collections houses rare documents pertaining to Arkansas history in the University Libraries' collections, including archival materials and manuscript collections that support research and writing in Arkansas Studies. Special Collections currently houses over 1,200 manuscript collections.

Kester said: "I never thought of the journals going anyplace else. Special Collections is the place where the critical mass of historic documents about Arkansas is located. It is the natural answer for where to place any document of historic significance to the state."

Jonas Tebbetts was a civic leader in Fayetteville from the 1840s through the early 1860s, when his support of the Union endangered him and his family. One 1862 diary entry describes a stagecoach hold-up "to record the truth and bear testimony to humanity and kind treatment" by the Confederate soldiers. However, another diary records Tebbetts' imprisonment in Fort Smith on a charge of treason by General Benjamin McCulloch later in 1862. McCulloch was killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge before he could carry out his threat to hang Tebbetts, and Tebbetts eventually moved his family north to St. Louis. The Tebbetts' home on Dickson Street served as the headquarters for both the Union and Confederate armies at different times in the war and today houses the Washington County Historical Society.

Kester, a native Arkansan who lives in Fayetteville with his wife Cheryl, has been in private practice here since 1996. For more information regarding University Libraries Special Collections, see <http://libinfo.uark.edu/specialcollections/about/overview.asp> or call (479) 575-5577. Although the journals need to be processed by Special Collections archivists before being made available to the public, the Libraries are already working with the Washington County Historical Society to transcribe the journals and make the transcriptions available online.