STONE GARDENS: Yell County cemetery one of limited number in state with verified Revolutionary War veteran remains

Tucked away on a gentle rise just north of what used to be the bustling county seat of Carrollton, Arkansas, a weathered sandstone marker stands guard over one of the oldest graves in Carroll County. The inscription is worn but still readable: Joseph Calvin Easter Sr., June 17, 1792 – April 4, 1876.

Born in Randolph County, North Carolina, before Arkansas was even a territory, Joseph Easter lived a life that spanned the birth of a nation. He was a veteran of the War of 1812, serving under Captain John Reed in the North Carolina militia. When the British burned Washington in 1814, men like Easter answered the call to defend the young republic.

He survived the war, married Lucretia “Cresey” Moon around 1815, and began raising a family that would eventually stretch across the South.

By the 1830s the Easters joined the great westward push. They settled first in Tennessee, then Alabama, before crossing the Mississippi River into the brand-new state of Arkansas. Land records show Joseph claiming acreage in Madison County in the 1840s.

When Carroll County split off in 1833, the family found themselves neighbors to the new county seat at Carrollton, a thriving little town of merchants, lawyers, and stagecoach stops.

Life wasn’t easy on the frontier. Joseph and Lucretia buried several children young. Census rolls from 1850 through 1870 list them farming the same hillside land, surrounded by married sons and daughters who stayed close.

Joseph was 78 when the Civil War tore through the Ozarks. Though too old to fight, the war touched him all the same as raiders burned barns, stole livestock, and left families hungry.

Carrollton never recovered; when the railroad bypassed it in the 1880s, the town slowly died.

Joseph didn’t live to see that. He passed away on April 4, 1876, at age 83, one of the longest lives anyone in the county could remember. Lucretia followed him a few years later.

They lie side by side in Carrollton Cemetery, beneath matching stones that volunteers cleaned and photographed for Find a Grave (Memorial ID 24462139 for Joseph, 24462168 for Lucretia).Today the cemetery sits quiet beside the old Masonic lodge hall, the last building left in Carrollton.

Tall cedars shade the rows of pioneers, Confederate soldiers, and babies who never saw a first birthday.

.Drive out there on a spring afternoon when the dogwoods are blooming. Stand at Joseph Easter’s grave and you’re standing at the end of a journey that began before the Alamo, before the steamboat, before Arkansas was anything more than a dream on a map.

A War of 1812 veteran, a father of Arkansas pioneers, finally home in the red-dirt hills he helped settle. In Carrollton Cemetery, his long road finally came to rest.

B