Our Arklahoma Heritage: A Massachusetts bookbinder followed his brother to Arkansas and settled Mount Ida
Granville Whittington was born on June 2, 1808, in Cohasset, Massachusetts, the son of William Whittington Jr. and Hepzibah Lincoln Whittington. His father had come from England and settled in the Massachusetts coastal town, where the family put down roots among the Puritan communities of the early nineteenth century.
Granville grew up with his older brother Hiram Abiff Whittington, who later became a well known figure in Arkansas after moving south in the 1820s. Hiram worked as a printer for the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock before establishing himself in Hot Springs, where he ran a store, post office, and boarding house while writing detailed letters home about frontier life.
Those letters, which Granville carefully preserved and later bound as a bookbinder by trade, helped shape the younger brother's decision to follow west.
In Boston, Granville married Cordelia Wilder on August 31, 1831. Cordelia, born April 25, 1810, was the daughter of Eleazar Curtis Wilder and Christiana Curtis Wilder. The couple made their home in the city for several years, where Granville practiced his trade and began raising a family. Their early children included sons such as Hiram A. Whittington, born in 1832.
Drawn by his brother's accounts of opportunity along the Arkansas frontier and by the promise of land and trade, Granville and Cordelia left Massachusetts around 1835. They traveled first to Hot Springs, where they stayed briefly near Hiram, then pushed farther into the Ouachita highlands.
Granville settled on the south fork of the Ouachita River in what would become Montgomery County. There he cleared land for farming and opened the area's first general store, serving scattered settlers who needed supplies, news, and a place to gather. In June 1842, just before the county was formally organized, he secured a post office for his store and named it Mount Ida after a hill near his native Massachusetts.
Across the river stood the small hamlet of Montgomery, which became the county seat upon organization. That community later changed its name to Salem in July 1850 and eventually adopted the name Mount Ida.
The town was incorporated in 1854. For about six years Granville operated both the post office and store from his log home roughly a mile north of the present town square until the post office moved to the county clerk's office in 1848.
He also served his neighbors in public office, winning election to the Arkansas House of Representatives from Montgomery County in 1846. Some accounts refer to him as Colonel Granville Whittington, reflecting the respect he earned as a leading settler.
Life in the new country was hard, yet the Whittington's prospered enough to raise a large family. Cordelia bore about ten children, with eight surviving to adulthood. Among them were Junius George Whittington, born in 1839 near Mount Ida, Horatio Bates Whittington, and daughters including Cordelia Zailphia, who later married John S. Elder.
The family farmed, traded, and took part in the growing community. Granville continued to look after the letters his brother had written, preserving a firsthand record of early Arkansas that later proved valuable to historians. Descendants stayed close to the land. Sons and grandsons farmed, entered business, and remained active in Montgomery County affairs for generations.
Granville Whittington died on April 27, 1887, at the age of seventy-nine, at his home near Mount Ida. Cordelia outlived him by five years, dying on January 10, 1892. Both were buried in the Whittington Cemetery, the family burial ground they established on a knoll near Mount Ida for their descendants.
The cemetery, still maintained anrock-fenceded, holds many members of the family who followed the original settlers. Their graves mark the end of a long journey from the Massachusetts coast to the Arkansas highlands and the beginning of a lineage that helped shape the county that still bears the name Granville chose for his post office.
