Stone Gardens: Rural resting place near George community in Newton County holds member of pioneer Allred Family

Deep in the Boston Mountains of Newton County,, near the small community of George, lies Hopewell Cemetery.

This quiet, wooded graveyard holds the remains of early settlers who traveled long distances to build new lives in the rugged Ozarks. With fewer than 30 marked graves, many overgrown and some marked only by plain fieldstones, it stands as a final resting place for families who followed well-worn migration paths westward

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The story of Hopewell Cemetery is tied to the larger movement of pioneers into the Arkansas Ozarks during the early 1800s. Families from Tennessee, North Carolina, and other Appalachian regions left crowded eastern lands in search of affordable farmland that reminded them of home--rolling hills, clear streams, and thick forests.

These settlers often traveled in extended family groups. One family would arrive first, clear land, and send word back east, encouraging brothers, sisters, cousins, and in-laws to follow the same trails. Routes like the Southwest Trail through Missouri or paths along the White River brought wagon trains of households to northwest Arkansas

.The Allred family is a clear example of this chain migration. Originally from North Carolina, they moved to Overton County, Tennessee, in the late 1700s. By the 1820s and 1830s, branches of the family pushed farther west into what became Carroll and Newton counties.

Jonathan Wesley Allred

Jonathan Wesley Allred, born in Tennessee in 1820, settled in the Osage Township area after marrying Susannia McCollough in 1848. Together they raised several children, many of whom stayed nearby and married into other local families.

Jonathan died in 1895 and was buried at Hopewell beside his wife, who had passed three years earlier. Several of their children and grandchildren lie there too.

Life in Newton County was hard. The rocky soil supported small farms, livestock, and timber work rather than large crops.

During the Civil War, the area leaned toward the Union, unlike much of the South, and families like the Allreds kept to themselves in isolated valleys. Their story--large families, local marriages, and lifelong ties to the land--is typical of Ozark pioneers

.Today, Hopewell Cemetery is easy to miss, hidden among trees and visited mostly by descendants or local historians. It reflects a common fate for rural Ozark graveyards: as younger generations moved away in the 20th century, many sites fell into neglect

. Yet places like Hopewell remain powerful reminders of the determination that brought families across mountains and rivers to start over

The stones at Hopewell mark the end of long journeys, but they also represent links in migration chains that helped settle the Ozarks. Those chains still echo today when modern visitors trace their roots back to these quiet hills.