John Fitzgerald

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John Fitzgerald (b. c. 1794) was a Virginian who had moved to Arkansas by way of Alabama in the early 1820s. His daughter Jane married John Reddick, son of William Reddick, who is said to have built Elkhorn Tavern. In 1840, Fitzgerald occupied the SW ¼ of the SW ¼ of Section 19, T18N, R29W. Fitzgerald’s place was at present-day Springdale, Arkansas, on the road from the Missouri line toward Fayetteville. Cannon’s, Taylor’s, and Hildebrand’s contingents of Cherokees in 1838 and early 1839 were the first major Cherokee removal parties to reach this point.

Sources: 1850 Federal Census, Washington County, Arkansas, Dwelling 53; Dorothy Allen “Jane Fitzgerald Reddick,” History of Benton County, Arkansas (Dallas: Curtis Media Corporation, 1991), 717; History of Benton, Washington, Carroll, Madison, Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian County, Arkansas (Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889), 24, hereafter cited as History of Benton; Benton County Records, Original Entry Records, 1835-1880 (Benton County Records, Roll 15, Arkansas History Commission), p. 23.