When you send your kids off to school every morning or when you make the trip to Fayetteville to cheer on the Arkansas Razorbacks in your favorite sport, you should tip your hat to John Newton Sarber, a civil war veteran, lawyer, state senator, and eventually, a US marshal.
Sarber, who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in October,1837, helped create the state's first public school system and, as a Republican state senator, introduced legislation that funded the support for the University of Arkansas.
Saber was one of four children born to the union of Stephen and Lucille Sarber. Seven years after his mother died giving birth to one of his two sisters, the abolitionist family moved to Kansas Territory in 1855.
Staunch Republicans, Sarber and his father immediately became involved with the newly formed arm of the party as soon as they arrived in Kansas. At the beginning of the Civil War Sarber enlisted as a private in the 2nd Kansas Infantry.
Serving in that unit, and later in the 15th Kansas Calvary, Sarber was present for at least five battles and skirmishes during the Civil War. Records indicate he saw action at Old Fort Wayne in Indian Territory, the Battle of Prairie Grove, the engagement at Cain Hill near Fayetteville, and the action at Devil's Backbone in Sebastian County.
After the Civil War, Arkansas was a hot bed of activity for Republican Reconstruction. Sarber, who had opened a law practice in Clarksville,was chosen as a delegate to the state Constitutional convention of 1868 as a representative from Johnson County. It was during that time that he put together legislation to not only fund educational opportunities across the state, but also sponsored the bill that led to the creation of the University of arkansas.
He served on the first University board of trustees in Fayetteville and was on the committee that selected the design of Old Main the first permanent building on the campus and the signature landmark at the university.
The county seat of Johnson County had originally been in a riverport town called Spadra Bluff. The county seat was later moved to Clarksville and during Sarber's time in the legislature there was an outcry from a majority of the area citizens to move the county seat back to the original site.
Sabar wanted to keep the county seat at Clarksvil le and introduced a bill that became Act 25 of 1877 which created a new county south of the Arkansas River. The part of existing Johnson County south of the river was combined with parts of Scott and Polk counties and a small portion of Franklin County. Over Sarbr's objections the new County was named in his honor.
Arkansas junior high state history textbooks for a number of years claimed carpetbagger Republicans had immigrated into the region and "secured control of the government by unfair elections and by arousing the 'colored people' to villainy."
Sarber was one of those "carpetbaggers" as far as most people in the region were concerned.
As forward-thinking and as effective Sarber had been as a legislator, he didn't have a lot of friends among his partisan neighbors and when the Democrats finally wrested control of the Arkansas General Assembly from the Reupblicans in 1875, the county was renamed Logan in honor of Colonel James Logan who had been a slave holding pioneer of the region.
Two years later President Ulysses S. Grant nominated Sarber to fill the vacant post as US Marshal of the US Western District Court and the United States Senate confirmed Sarber the very next day.
Sarber took over control of the marshal's office in mid 1873 and inherited a post that was ripe with corruption and in a state of disarray for a number of years. Sarber arrived in the court just prior to the arrival of Judge Isaac C. Parker and actually oversaw the first hanging at the newly constructed gallows in Fort Smith after the court had moved from Van Buren.
It didn't take long for the old sentiments that festered from the Civil War to affect his time with the US District court. Sarber, along with several other carpetbaggers, were charged with criminal acts involving the disbursement of funds from the Marshal's office.
While Sarber was never indicted he resigned under growing political pressure on June 27, 1874 while he was on a business trip in Washington DC.
Sarber returned to Clarksville and continued his law career until shortly before his death on October 21,1905 at the age of 68.
His loyalty to the Republican party never wavered and he was a big supporter of Governor Powell Clayton and President Grant through both their terms. To the day of his death he was known around the state as "Mr. Republican".
After Sarber's death at his home in Clarksville in 1905 he was buried between his two Confederate brother-in-laws in the Confederate section of the Oakland Cemetery in Clarksville.
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