They had evidently chosen the area because of its protection from
the elements - due primarily to the surrounding foothills that kept
away rising waters and high winds.
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Although French trappers would have passed through the area around
1770 and one folktale tells of a white man marrying an Indian girl
on or around the site of Pocahontas as early as 1686, it was not
until the early 1800s that land in Pocahontas was officially
settled.
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Ranson S. Bettis, a
trader and physician from North Carolina, was Pocahontas' first permanent white
resident. Sometime around 1815 Bettis and his family made their way into
Randolph County. They built a house on a hill close to where the First Community
Bank and Prichard's Furniture now stand.
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They
also began a trading post known as Bettis Bluff. Bettis' daughter, Cinderella,
married a peddler named Thomas Stephenson Drew and Bettis eventually gave them
800 acres near present-day Biggers, where the couple built a house. Bettis and
Drew later became partners in an effort to establish an actual town. The product
of their efforts was the founding of Pocahontas as the seat of Randolph County,
which was granted official status by the territorial legislature in 1835.
Randolph County was named for John Randolph, another early settler in the area.
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In
1838, the Arkansas Gazette ran a story that included this statement about the
prosperity of the new town: "The new town of Pocahontas, county seat of Randolph
County, is said to have become, within 18 months of its existence, one of the
most flourishing places within the state. Lots in the town had increased in
value from 100 to 500 percent. The farm land in the county, which had sold for
$1.25 per acre, was now much in demand at $20." In fact, all this good fortune
had led some to proclaim Pocahontas as the "metropolis of the West."
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By
the 1880s, Pocahontas and Randolph County had already acquired a
long history. Together, they had been part of four
Sovereignties: France, Spain, the Confederacy and the United States;
four Territories: District of New Madrid (1805), Territory of
Missouri (1815),
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