ALBERT GALLATIN ARNOLD. Among the little settlement of pioneers who gathered about Queens Peak, in Montague county, in the early seventies, a few still linger under the influence of that silent, rugged landmark and are numbered with the substantial and permanent home-builders of the county. Of such is Albert G. Arnold, the subject of this personal notice. The footprints of the savage had scarcely been blotted out and his blood-thirsty yell had hardly died away when Mr. Arnold brought his little family to the Peak that September day in 1873 and added the influence of his presence to the determined colony already established there. Almost a third of a century has passed since that eventful day, and its years have been filled with success and reverses, yet his faith in the ultimate future of his county prompted him to hold fast and enjoy the presence of the harvest time which is now actually upon us.
He drifted to Texas from Clinton county, Missouri, whither his mother and her children went in 1859 and where the vocation of the farm occupied them for nearly fifteen years. In 1856 the family left its native state and accompanied a brother-in-law to the Omaha Indian Reserve, in Nebraska, where the latter was the government farmer in charge of the agricultural efforts of the tribe of Omahas. The accidental death of this relatives severed the tie which held the family to the frontier and all hands turned their faces eastward and took up their abode in Clinton county, Missouri. The year of their departure for Texas the two brothers, Cassius M. and Albert G., loaded their families and their effects into proverbial “prairie schooners” of that day and made their slow way over the intervening distance, stopping at Bonham as their first point of lookout in the Lone Star state. Being directed westward they prospected the country all the way to Queens Peak and when our subject reached the point overlooking the beautiful valley from the east he remarked to his brother, “In that valley I intend to locate,” and he kept his word.
Albert G. Arnold was born in Lorain county, Ohio, July 18, 1848. Albert G. Arnold, his father, was an early settler in that county and was from Chautauqua county, New York, where his birth occurred in 1799. The family was established in New York state by Elisha Arnold, our subject’s grandfather, a Scotch farmer and justice of the peace, whose family numbered eight children, the sons of whom were: Hiram, Horace, Thomas, Chauncey, William and Albert G. The names of his two daughters are not now accessible.
Albert G. Arnold, Sr., came to maturity in his native county and his educational advantages were those of the rural school. In early manhood he went to Ohio and in Lorain county he married Eunice (Gillett) Richmond, whose family numbered ten children. Sylvia Richmond Arnold was born in Lorain county, Ohio, and died in Clinton county, Missouri, in 1873, age forty-nine years. Her children were: Orpha, who first married Newton Tucker, who was killed by accident as Indian farmer in Nebraska, and whose second husband was James Force, died in Clinton county, Missouri, without living issues; Cassius M., a well known farmer of Montague county, and Albert G., Sr. of this review.
Fate willed it that the subject of this sketch should pass his life on the frontier and he began it at eight years of age. The stay on the Indian Reservation served to give him a lively experience for a child and the family home in Missouri was among the scattered habitations of a pioneer community. He began contributing to his own support so early that his career seems always to have been in his own hands. He became a farmer from the first and while his resources amounted to naught then, his condition and his prospects warranted him in buying a farm before he left Missouri and upon this the first years of his married life were spent.
Having reached Queens Peak, he first located in Adaire, the first town attempted at the Peak, but when this hamlet seemed doomed to die he bought a forty-acre tract southeast of nature’s landmark and laid not the village of Queens Peak. Lots sold readily and the place grew to be a respectable little town in a short time. It had seven stores, two gins, two blacksmith shops, a hotel and a schoolhouse and was the leading business point in the south end of Montague county until Bowie outstripped it and finally drew off its substantial support, when it went the way of Adaire and is now only a memory.
While Queens Peak was in existence Mr. Arnold was one of its general merchants and last to abandon the town to its fate. Early in the eighties he resumed farming and raising stock in which he resumed farming and raising stock in which his success has been marked and constant. His dominions embrace five hundred and fifty acres of land, extensively farmed and amply stocked with cattle, horses and mules, the breeding of which latter he has lately made a special feature of his varied affairs.
In Clinton county, Missouri, December 7, 1871, Albert G. Arnold married Frances Leinhart, a daughter of Eli and Malinda (Biggerstaff) Leinhart, who settled in Missouri from Kentucky. Mr. and Mrs. Arnold’s children are: Nora Orpha, wife of Dr. Clark, of Salona, Texas; Fred Lawrence, who married Stella Stephens, resides in Oklahoma and has issue, Cleo, Vorce and Opal; Woodie, of Marlow, Indian Territory; Trula Pearl, wife of Aldo Culberhouse, of Sweetwater, Oklahoma; Quinton Milo, Essig Lorain, Roland C., and Turney M., and Lester, who died at the age of two years.
The Arnolds of the earlier time were affiliated with the Whig and Republican parties, but our subject has allied himself, from his majority, with the Democrats, but has manifested no political ambition. He has served as a school trustee, he believes in religious teachings and is a member of the Christian church.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, p. 464.