A tall obelisk in northeastern Hot Spring County bears the names of two of Arkansas’s prominent pioneer families. The lone cenotaph marks the burial place of Benjamin F. Scull who died in 1869, and includes the name of his wife, Mary Jane “Jamie” Reyburn Scull, who died many years later in 1918 and is buried in Little Rock’s Mount Holly Cemetery. Their memorial stands on the side of a hill near the intersection of the Military Road and Stringtown Road. A concrete border surrounds the single monument, and there are inscriptions on all four of its sides. The surnames of Scull and Reyburn were certainly familiar ones in our state’s early history—Scull at Arkansas Post and southeast Arkansas, and Reyburn in the Hot Spring County area.

Members of the Scull family settled at Arkansas Post prior to the Louisiana Purchase. The Sculls were active in southeast Arkansas business and politics for many years. Hewes and James Scull were particularly well-known. Hewes held a variety of offices, including that of Sheriff and County Clerk of Arkansas County during the territorial period. James served as Treasurer of Arkansas Territory, and his son, also named James, was elected Jefferson County Judge. Interestingly, James witnessed one of Arkansas’s most legendary events: He was present in 1837 during an Arkansas House of Representatives’ session at which Speaker of the House John Wilson of Clark County killed fellow legislator Joseph J. Anthony with a Bowie knife!

Benjamin F. Scull was born at Arkansas Post in 1830, the son of Hewes Scull. After spending much of his youth in Philadelphia following his father’s death, Benjamin grew up to be a man of many talents, becoming a doctor, druggist, musician, and composer. As a reflection of his musical interests, he wrote such songs as “I Am Near to Thee” and “Check Mate Polka” in the 1850s. After graduating from Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia in 1857, Benjamin Scull returned to Arkansas. He became organist at a Little Rock church, and apparently knew Dr. Lorenzo Gibson, who also had lived in Hot Spring County. Scull married Jamie Reyburn in 1857, and by 1860, they resided in Arkansas County.

Scull served in the unit known as the Jefferson Guards and joined the First Arkansas Infantry state troops in April 1861 just before secession. The First Arkansas later became a part of the Confederate Army as part of the Fifteenth Arkansas Infantry. During the Civil War he served as a surgeon and was commended for his bravery at the Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry by General Sterling Price: Scull and a couple of others “particularly distinguished themselves at Jenkins’ Ferry by responding with alacrity to a call for volunteers to reconnoiter the enemy’s position, riding coolly up to their ranks & receiving a heavy volley, which disclosed the Federal lines, but unfortunately took effect upon Lieutenant Scull, fracturing his leg, which was later amputated.” Benjamin F. Scull died just a few years later of consumption (tuberculosis) on March 5, 1869, at “Fairplay” (noted on the monument) at the former residence of his father-in-law, Samuel Wallace Reyburn.

The Reyburn name is very familiar to today’s upper Ouachita River Valley residents, where it not only refers to individuals, but also to pieces of today’s physical landscape, such as a church, road, and creek. Samuel Wallace Reyburn, born before 1800 in Virginia, moved with his family to Missouri, then settled in Hot Spring County in the early 1830s. Reyburn quickly became involved in business and community affairs. He served as a Justice of the Peace before Arkansas became a state, as a Representative in the State of Arkansas’s first General Assembly after statehood, and then eight years as State Senator during the 1840s, one of this area’s first political leaders.

Reyburn died in 1854 aboard the steamer Forest Rose on the Mississippi River near Memphis while enroute to Louisville, Kentucky for medical treatment. Unfortunately, he did not reach his destination. S.W. Reyburn was buried in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock.