The Arkansas History Commission announces the recent microfilming of one of the South’s scarcest antebellum Methodist newspapers, the Memphis, Arkansas, and Ouachita Christian Advocate. The paper, founded in 1851 at Memphis, Tennessee, was published as a joint venture of the Arkansas and Memphis conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Francis A. Owen was its first editor. In 1854, Rev. James E. Cobb, an itinerant Methodist missionary, minister, and educator from Arkansas, became associated with the paper. From 1857 to 1862, the paper was called the Memphis, Arkansas, and Ouachita Christian Advocate, acknowledging the growing influence of the Ouachita Methodist Conference, centered in southern Arkansas, in denominational affairs. About 1860, Rev. Cobb began publishing a separate religious journal, called the Ouachita Conference Journal in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. It was Arkansas’s second religious newspaper, following the Arkansas Baptist, which began a year earlier in Little Rock. For a short time after the Civil War, Cobb resumed editorship of the Memphis, Arkansas, and Ouachita Christian Advocate, which was published under a variety of names including the Western Methodist. Around 1880, the publication was moved to Arkansas, and eventually became the Arkansas Methodist, which is still being published in Little Rock.
The files of the Memphis, Arkansas, and Ouachita Christian Advocate are limited to eleven issues: two in 1853, one in 1856, two in 1858, five in 1859, and one issue dated July 11, 1861, making it one of the rarest religious newspapers published in the South before the Civil War. The original papers, in very poor condition after nearly 140 years, are housed in the library of Duke University in North Carolina. The library allowed the Arkansas History Commission to microfilm the originals to make them more available to researchers. The file may be seen at the History Commission offices in Little Rock during regular office hours. For additional information on the History Commission’s collections, visit its website at www.ark-ives.com or call 501.682.6900.
