Arkansas History Through Music is a musical journey through the past of Arkansas containing detailed information about the state, it's citizens, and it's many musicians.

2. Folk Music

5. Mr. & Mrs. William Woodruff Man in full Masonic regalia

7. James Sevier Conway (1836-1840) First Governor of Arkansas

8. James Sevier Conway was born on December 4, 1796, in Greene County, Tennessee, the son of Thomas Conway and Anne Rector Conway. James Conway and his brothers and three sisters were raised on a prosperous frontier plantation and received their education from private tutors. In 1818 the family moved to St. Louis, probably to be near Anne Conway's uncle, the Surveyor General of the vast Missouri Territory. In the first two decades of the 19th century, the United States was rapidly settling east of the Mississippi River and fortunes were to be made speculating in frontier land. No one was better positioned to take advantage of this opportunity than the surveyors who first encountered these new territories and opened them up for settlement. In 1820 James Conway and his older brother Henry were appointed surveyors for the newly formed Arkansas Territory. Almost all of the early surveyors of Arkansas were, in fact, related in some fashion. Combined with their advance knowledge of the best lands, this gave them a tremendous advantage during the early settlement of Arkansas. As a result four interrelated families of former surveyors would dominate Arkansas politics for most of the antebellum period. The families were the Conways, the Rectors, the Seviers, and the Johnsons. Collectively they were referred to as the "Dynasty," or more often as "the Family."

9. Hanging in Fort Smith Sassafras Prairie Sultana Burning Pleasant Springs School Steamboats At Newport Brooks-Baxter War

10. The Sultana on April 26, 1865 The Sultana on April 27, 1865

11. Slave auction. This was a typical scene throughout the south.

13. Lincoln, “The Great Emancipator”, Entering Richmond 10 days before His assassination. Runaway slaves escaping.

14. Thomas W. Jackson was an illiterate brakeman for the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company. He related the jokes and tall tales he heard on his journeys to his wife, who wrote them down for him. These collected jokes served as the basis for his first book. This is a copy of the 1942 revised edition of that first book, which was published in many editions from 1903 up to the 1950's, when its politically incorrect humor went out of style. The book initially became popular when it was hawked to railroad passengers headed to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. It went on to become the bestselling joke book in American history.

15. Play-Party Songs

16. Play-Party Songs

20. Scott Joplin 1868--1917