Fredonia, Arkansas

The little community now called Biscoe, tucked between the White River and the Cache River in eastern Arkansas, once carried the name Fredonia, and that name carries a history. In eighteen twenty-six, a group of American settlers led by Haden Edwards, with Cherokee allies, tried to carve out an independent republic in Mexican Texas called Fredonia, a short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful bid for sovereignty. When a post office opened here in eighteen seventy-two after the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad came through, someone chose that same name, a quiet nod to that earlier dream.

The name cycled to Surrounded Hill and back to Fredonia before the town was finally called Biscoe in nineteen oh two, named for a local family. The railroad and the river bottomland made it a farming community, never large, always close to the water.