Several historical sheriffs in Washington County have served more than two terms at various times but most of those law men were elected for back-to-back terms.
Only two Sheriff's in Washington County were elected after having served and being out of office for a significant amount 0f time before they were elected for the second term. One of those was Arthur Davidson who served from 1941 to 1942 and was also the elected sheriff from 1963 to 1968.
The other was a Cole County, Missouri born man who also served two separate terms as sheriff but his time in office was separated by a 20-year span that saw him serve six two-year stints in the office of sheriff.
His name was Zebulon Montgomery Pettigrew and his first stint as Sheriff stretched from 1852 through 1856 during the wild and woolly pre-Civil War era in northwest Arkansas. But "Zeb" was also a contemporary of the deputy US Marshals that served the Western District of Arkansas under Judge Isaac C. Parker from 1872 through 1880.
Pettigrew was from good stock. He was the son of George Augustus Pettigrew, a veteran of the War of 1812. George was a native of Wilkes County, Georgia having been born in that location December 27, 1793 to the union of George Pettigrew and Jane (Long) Pettigrew.
The family moved to Missouri around 1813 when Zebulon was 19 years old and at some time lived in the area of the Montiteau Creek near the border of Montiteau and Cole counties. George was already a Justice of the Peace by the time the family moved to Missouri where he was a farmer. George is on record as performing the first ever recorded marriage in Cole County on June 28, 1821.
The family is next found on the 1830 Arkansas census having moved to the area that would later become Hempstead County. By 1836 the family had moved to Washington County and a year later owned 80 acres of prime farmland.
George was a well-respected resident of the area and in October 1840 was elected to the Arkansas House Of Representatives from Washington County serving as a Whig.
Zebulon was one of five known children born to George Pettigrew. Zebulon was oldest of the five, all boys, and as such handled many of the duties on the farm while his dad was away serving in the state legislature.
The family apparently had homesteaded in the Prairie Township area and owned seven slaves in 1850. George was also one of the incorporators of the Arkansas legislature land grant Arkansas College in 1852. He served as a member of the Board of Trustees for one year.
It appears that Zebulon had just turned 34 when he assumed the office of Washington County sheriff the first time. Probably, having a well-respected father who served in the legislature didn't hurt his chances when he ran for office.
Zebulon had married the former Margaret Odle on February 8, 1949 a little over three and a half years before he was elected sheriff.
Most of the records from his first term in office we're destroyed by looting during the Civil War. The second time around, however, proved to be quit an exhilarating time in the formation of Washington County.
Zebulon was sheriff in 1874 when a stagecoach was held up near Winslow. There is no empirical evidence to prove the fact but oral tradition maintains that members of the James gang operating out of the "Little Dixie" area of Western Missouri were the culprits. Zebulon and a posse reportedly spent over a week scouring the hills in northern Washington County and southern Benton County to no avail. The proceeds were said to have been stashed in a cave in Carroll County but no records indicate if they were ever found.
The following year a woman by the name of Mary Holcomb was convicted in Washington County for killing her husband George.
The Fayetteville Observer reported on the incident December 11, 1875:
"A mysterious murder was committed in the neighborhood of Springdale, in this county, on Thursday night of last week. A man by the name of George Holcomb was the victim and the deed was perpetrated in his own house. Suspicion pointed to the murdered man's wife as the author of this atrocious crime and she was promptly arrested and taken before Esquire Hartley for examination on Tuesday and at our latest advices the matter was undergoing a thorough investigation. We trust this horrible affair will be ferreted out and the guilty be brought to justice. Since the above was in type the investigation has been concluded. Mrs. Holcomb was on yesterday committed to jail to await a bearing at the next term of circuit court."
Although Mary Holcomb was convicted, that conviction was later overturned by the Arkansas Supreme Court after her trial. The Court ruled that Mary Holcomb may have been in fear for her own life when she took the life of her husband.
Zebulon also had an incident in 1877 where he and his deputies arrested several men and women who were in trouble for "illegal cohabitation". Records indicate that all were given a small fine and sent forth with an admonishment to "go forth and sin no more".
In 1879 deputy John R. Sorrell arrested a close friend of a man named John Reed. John Rutherford had been arrested for assault and Reed went to the courthouse demanding that Rutherford be released. When he was told he could bail his friend out of jail if he chose, he refused and then struck jailer George Rivercomb in the head with a bottle of brandy.
Deputy Sorrell was able to pull his weapon and fired two shots into Reed, killing him. Reed was then arrested and charged with homicide but the complaint against him was discharged at trial. Records indicate that George Reed, brother of the dead man, swore revenge Sorrell and Sheriff Pettigrew but he apparently died before he could get his vengeance.
When his term of office ended in 1880, Zebulon retired from the law enforcement game. He returned to farming in the Marrs Hill Township near Tonitown and according to census records lived out the remainder of his life on the original homestead.
He died May 7th, 1900 at the age of 81.
Tragically, one of Zebulon's sons . James Cater Pettigrew, died a scant three months after his father. James Pettigrew had moved to Muskogee Oklahoma. James United States courts were first established in the territory and was connected to the court in the capacity of court crier and bailiff. For several years James, an enterprising citizen, had the contract for feeding the government prisoners in the northern district.
James made a report to the editors of the Muskogee Phoenix when he returned home from his father's funeral. Three months later on August 14, 190 he died in his sleep of natural causes at the e age of 49.
Zebulon Montgomery Pettigrew was laid to rest in the historic Evergreen cemetery in Fayetteville where his second wife Margaret was interred in the same plot after her December 1908 death.
