Faulkner County, of course is to a very great extent rural. Conway, its county seat, was the only townsite to acquire a large urban population. The people here are for the most part descendants of the first early colonists.
Throughout America there existed a generation of two farmers who tried to go along on their grandfather's example, i.e., taking all and putting nothing back into the soil with the result that they soon ruined they soil and ran themselves into bankruptcy.
It will be noted that the many settlements in this county are from six to 11 miles apart, or about the distance of a brace of lumbering oxen or perky mules could be expected to cover from sunup to sundown on primitive roadways. So as these early settlers moved day by day, they often liked the terrain or the type of soil in which they camped and decided to move no further.
All of Faulkner County townsites came into being after the Civil War, with the single exception of Greenbrier, which dates from 1857. Cadron had for some two decades lay moulding, quite forgotten and even unknown, by these hardy newcomers in this new land and county.
We shall now begin a systematic discussion of the principal townsites. We will review their history as to their origin, their naming if it can be determined, and some of their principal commercial firms of the past.
This town-by-town study has not been exhaustive, but it does reveal much of these early towns or settlements. There is nothing unusual about the history of these small communities. It is the same story of thousands of other villages throughout America. One farm house is erected, then another, the timber is cut off, piled up and burned.
There remained 10 inches of rich forest loam, the residue of a million years of growth and decay. It was often ruined in one man's lifetime.
Many people in this county made no significant contribution to our history, but were merely interesting characters in a cast of hundreds just like them. Their lives are often summarized in a mere sentence in this brief history.
Any study of pre-1900 Faulkner County is hampered by the fact that many important facts have been lost by the newspapers of that era being burned in fires. The little that remained has been badly used by early historians and their errors have been perpetuated by later writers. Often this writer has had to subject much material and discard and then go back to the original source material to secure the correct facts.
Three of the present townships - Matthews, Mountain and Bristol - now contain no villages. Bristol had at one time a thriving village with even a telephone exchange, but this, through the years, has entirely disappeared. Today no church or store building stands in Bristol township. A lonely cemetery is the only sign of former prominence.
