Three Family Letters from Arkansas 1845-1861
Three letters from the Jane Curl Walker Letters Collection are summarized below. These letters offer a unique window to life in Arkansas in the mid-19th century. The full Jane Walker Letter Collection comprises scans of more than 100 original family letters from the 1800s, complete transcripts of all letters, and indices by subject and person. […]
Suzanne Fittig Freyschlag
George Freyschlag
George Freyschlag and his wife, Suzanne Fittig, were born in the former district of Frankenthal: George in Sandhoffen, and Suzanne in Grosskarlbach[i], a small town on the Eckbach river, where the couple would marry and have their first 6 children. In 1821 they moved to Mannheim, in order to secure a better education for the […]
Thomas Jefferson Mullins (III)
Thomas Jefferson Mullins was born in 1816 on a farm in Rockingham County, North Carolina. In 1836, T.J. married Matilda Mims in her home county, Caswell County, North Carolina (adjacent to Rockingham County)1. The history of the Mims family is detailed in Matilda’s biography. T.J. began tobacco farming in Caswell County, and had three children […]
The California Gold Rush
On the cold, snowy morning of April 16, 1849, 120 citizens of Fayetteville, Arkansas, gathered in the town’s central square to bid farewell to family and friends who set out on the difficult, dangerous, overland trek across the wild Midwest and the Rocky Mountains to California—in search of gold. Edward Freyschlag and several of his […]
Amey Chiles
Richard Wyatt
Richard Wyatt was born in Caroline County, Virginia, on the Wyatt estate known as Plain Dealing, located on the North Anna River, five or six miles from its junction with the South Anna. In old papers and letters, Plain Dealing is spoken of as the ancestral seat of the Wyatts. No doubt earlier members of […]
Thomas C. Mullins
Thomas C. Mullins grew up on a farm in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the youngest of 6 siblings. What we know of the farm is that Thomas’s father William Madison Mullins was at one time head of the local fruit growers association, and also kept horses to enter in local races. Thomas received his preparatory education in […]
Sophia Sawyer Freyschlag
Sophia Freyschlag (1845-1901) was the daughter of Edward Freyschlag (1814-1905) and Lucy Hawkins Freyschlag (1828-1922). This article details proof of her lineage to the Mullins family. This family is shown on the 1860 U.S. Census[i], showing parents Edward and Lucy Freyschag, and their oldest daughter Sophia. Edward Freyschlag’s will was dated 23 Jul 1891[ii]. Edward […]
Edward Freyschlag
The Mullins family roots are almost all English. However, one Bavarian branch of the family immigrated to the U.S. from Frankenthal, Bavaria (today, southwest Germany), from an area known as the Rhenish Palatinate, on the west coast of the Rhine. Our ancestors George Freyschlag and his wife, Suzanne Fittig, were born in the former district […]
Lucy Hawkins
Lucy Hawkins (1828-1922) was the youngest of 6 children of Jane Walker Hawkins and Dr. Martin Hawkins. She attended the Sophia Sawyer Female Seminary in Fayetteville. In 1844, she married Edward Freyschlag, when Edward was 30 and Lucy was just 15 years old. The first of their 5 children, T.C. Mullins’s mother Sophie Sawyer Freyschlag, […]