Our Arklahoma Heritage: Author and historian Clara Bertha Ebo penned "The History of Crawford County" in 1950

Clara Bertha Eno

Clara Bertha Eno was born on February 14, 1854, in a house on the site that later became the Van Buren city library. She was the first child of Jonathan Adams Eno and Ellen Elizabeth Ward Eno. Her parents met in Van Buren although both came from Connecticut towns about forty miles apart.

oJnathan Adams Eno was born on June 23, 1822, in Simsbury (later Bloomfield), Hartford County, Connecticut, to Jonathan Eno and Orpha Adams Eno. He left home at age twenty-one around 1843 and went west. He opened a drugstore in Fort Smith and then moved to Van Buren in Crawford County, where he started another drugstore that also served as the post office.

He held the position of postmaster from 1852 to 1855.

In May 1853 he and Ellen Elizabeth Ward (born March 11, 1831, in Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut, to Truman Ward and Bethia Ward) returned to Middletown for their wedding and then settled in Van Buren.

Jonathan died in January 1862 at age thirty-nine from illness. He had served as mayor of Greenwood and held courthouse and post-office positions in Little Rock. Ellen raised the family during the Civil War years and died on April 20, 1869, at age thirty-eight.

She was buried in Indian Hill Cemetery, Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut.

Records show Clara as one of two daughters. Her younger sister was Jonella Amanda Eno, born on May 25, 1862, in Van Buren. Jonella died on September 24, 1862, at about three months old.

One of Clara's earliest memories was helping her mother care for wounded Confederate soldiers in local homes and makeshift hospitals. She never married and worked for years as a schoolteacher in Crawford County.

Over time she turned to collecting documents, letters, oral accounts, and artifacts about the county's past and Arkansas history more broadly. Her work aligned with statewide efforts to organize historical records.In 1905 she helped draft the legislation that created the Arkansas History Commission, predecessor

to the Arkansas State Archives. In 1909 she joined its board of directors and served continuously until her death. She led a 1908 effort to prevent demolition of Little Rock's Old State House. She belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

She wrote newspaper articles in the 1920s and 1930s and coauthored a 1935 history of the Arkansas Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1940 she compiled a list of fifty-five Revolutionary War soldiers buried in Arkansas, a resource still used by genealogists. She served as associate editor of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly and became a charter member of the reorganized Arkansas Historical Association in 1941

.Her longest project centered on Crawford County. She gathered courthouse records, tax lists, church minutes, newspaper files, and family stories over decades. This produced History of Crawford County, Arkansas, published by the Press-Argus in Van Buren in 1950.

The 499-page book covers territorial days through the county's formation, successive courthouses, growth of Van Buren and other towns, early merchants and doctors, steamboats on the Arkansas River, roads, newspapers, soldiers from the Revolution onward, Civil War accounts, historic homes, organizations, local firsts, and legends.

She placed no copyright on the book and stated its contents were for anyone who loved America, with free use permitted if credit was given.

Eno donated parts of her collection of letters, scrapbooks, and manuscripts to the University of Arkansas and state archives from 1938 to 1950. Her papers remain key sources for Northwest Arkansas research.

She died in Van Buren on August 2, 1951, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery beside her father and many early county settlers.

Historians, county officials, genealogists, and students continue to use her book for information found nowhere else. The Arkansas Historical Quarterly noted her death by calling her the state's first lady of history, a description that has endured.

Through her book and preserved records, Clara Bertha Eno kept the people and events of Crawford County in memory.