Volume 7, Number 11 - Spring 1982
Amon Jesse Fortner
by Viola Hartman
Amon Jesse Fortner was a writer of Ozark history and folklore. He was one of the three surviving children of Jacob and Malissia Hopper Fortner, born February 4, 1877 in the Turkey Creek Valley of Taney County, Mo. on the land homesteaded by his parents in 1870.
The given names are not common. However, the same combination was that of the Fortner’s neighbor to the east, Dr. A.J. Storms who homesteaded there about the same time. It is an interesting coincidence and just possibly the boy was delivered by and named for that stalwart soldier from North Carolina who was later to own some of the Fortner lands and to become the benevolent benefactor and financial giant of the Town of Hollister, Mo.
Amon's grandmother, Malinda Fortner, home- steaded there in 1867, receiving her patent in 1873 and built a small log cabin fourteen feet square with a roof of handmade shingles, a plank floor containing a fireplace and one door. The site of this elementary home is the north edge of the railroad overpass in Hollister.
The "Honeymoon Cabin" Amon’s father built was constructed of poles, chinked with clay and held together with square, iron nails. It had a dirt floor, a flat roof, three sides and no windows. An iron pot swung on a chair suspended from the roof in front of the opening. A huge log fire burned beneath it night and day, serving a threefold purpose; it heated the room, cooked the meals and kept away the wild animals. Years later, Amon was to recall that his father, not an enthusiastic woodchopper, kept the blaze going by the addition of huge logs brought to the blaze with a minimum of personal effort. Jacob would wrap a chain around a downed tree, and, attaching it to the yoke of the family’s team of oxen, drag it to the fire, always keeping a backup log in reserve. "Then mother would say, ‘chunk up the fire, Jake,’ and father would poke the second log into position.
For two years this dwelling was home for four persons, the couple and the two daughters of the bride by a former marriage until Malissia finally prevailed on her husband to build a more substantial home. It stood a few yards uphill from Malinda’s home, near the spring on what is now the east bank of the railroad right-of-way south of the Missouri Pacific depot.
Picturesque though it was, the rude shelter was not the dream home of Malissia, who had been accustomed to a better life as the daughter of Clemmon and Icyphenia Hopper, one of the early families to settle in Mincy, Mo. (It was Clemmon who became the first postmaster and had the general store there and who was also an organizer and elder of The Mincy Valley Baptist Church of Christ, established at Mincy in November of 1871.) According to her son, Malissia hated the place and referred to it as "The Old Railpen."
Jacob contracted malaria and both he and the children suffered chills and fever each fall. Malissia was in poor health, also, losing several babies prematurely. Conditions went from bad to worse and they were unable to farm the forty acres of their homestead. When Amon developed polio, Jacob and his wife made the decision to try the healing waters of the medicinal springs south of the Missouri/Arkansas border.
Following Malinda’s death in 1881, the Fortner family, Jacob, Malissia and their children, Tom, Clemmie and Amon, moved to the newly developing town of Eureka Springs, Ark. The children of Malissia, Rozella and Theodosia remaining with the Clemmon Hopper family.
They had neither money, food nor prospects. Their only item of value was a cow which they traded to a Mr. Phelps for passage to where they hoped would be a new lease on life--or at least an opportunity to make a living. They had barely enough clothes to cover themselves and their only possessions consisted of a rifle, some old covers, a three-legged iron skillet with an iron top having a ring it its center and a hook for lifting it off and a coffee can containing flour and a coffee pot. There was a tiny wooden chest containing the few personal things Malissia had managed to save.
When the family arrived in Eureka Springs, Fortune managed a frosty smile of welcome. Jacob found a job at Mrs. Massmain’s lumber yard paying 50ยข per day and his meals and Powell C. Clayton, Arkansas all-powerful moving force of the era, permitted them
[9]
to live in the various squatters shacks dotting his real estate holdings until the lands were sold for development. At one period Jacob did buy three city lots with an old house on it, for the princely sum of $100.00, payable at $5.00 down and $2.00 per month but even that proved to be beyond his financial capabilities.
Tho times were hard and Jacob a quiet, deeply-religious man, there were still instances of fun in the Fortner’s lives. Amon related one example when his father brought home a small kitten for the children. "It was coal black, he wrote, "with beautiful white stripes." Malissia was horrified. "Jake, have you gone plumb crazy bringing that polecat here?" But Jacob, unperturbed, explained the "problem" of such pets had been corrected and the animal became a member of the household, "setting up its headquarters in an old cast iron stove outside."
Shortly after, the two boys took their pet over to the Basin Spring Park, one of the favorite places of the invalids who came to "take the waters." When the little black kitten was observed in the five-year old’s arms, pandemonium reigned and as Amon wrote, "Some of these ‘helpless’ cripples were so eager to get going that they forgot all about the canes and crutches and developed most amazing and unknown powers of speedy locomotion. As an outstanding example of ‘miraculous healing’ that afternoon’s performance was probably never again equaled in the entire history of Eureka Springs--and that ‘miraculous healing’ wasn’t all due to Basin Springs water, either!
They remained in Eureka Springs, ekeing out a precarious living until work gave out and they had to move again, this time from the top of one of the highest mountains in town on which the great Crescent Hotel was soon to stand. So Jacob, seeking more stable employment, headed north--on foot, to the little community in Lawrence County, a few miles east of the Missouri/Kansas border where lead and zinc had just been discovered. The land belonged to Mr. G. E. Rinker and it was he who gave Jacob a job--this one paying $2.00 per day.
This little place which was to become the Town of Aurora, grew to a booming mining camp where the ore lay close to the earth’s surface to be picked and shoveled under the warm blue skies of the Ozarks region. It was before the days of modern machinery and all work was done by hand. Here a man with a handful of tools, small grubstake and an affinity for hard work could obtain a lease on whatever amount of ground he felt he could handle and have an operational mine.
Jacob had neither tools nor grubstake but was willing to do whatever work his new employer desired. So it was that, taken out to the orchard, given a shovel and told to "see what you can do," Jacob put his strong muscles into action and within ten minutes time located lead ore just six inches beneath the soil. "Eureka!" he yelled, giving the time honored term for "I’ve found it." And from that moment on, he was known as "Eureka" in those quarters. A new mine was underway and, if that were not enough, he found a second mine that same day, thus changing the course of the Fortner family fortunes.
These are but some of the highlights of the Fortner family seconded by Taney County’s native son who never forgot his hill country heritage. When he died in January of 1953 in Pomona, Ca., his home was well publicized as "Little Ozarks" and from its flower filled gardens he sent a continuous stream of stories, articles and poetry to the various publications neighboring on the places of his birth and childhood, all filled with the reminiscences of the early years he spent in the Ozarks.
[10]
This volume: Next Article | Table of Contents | Other Issues
Other Volumes | Keyword Search | White River Valley Quarterly Home | Local History Home
Copyright © White River Valley Historical Quarterly
