ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 37(Summer 1978)

 

David O. Dodd:

Folk Hero of Confederate Arkansas

By LeROY H. FISCHER*

Oklahoma State University

PERHAPS THE FOREMOST FOLK-HERO in Arkansas history is David Owen Dodd, who at the age of seventeen was executed as a Confederate spy by Union forces in Little Rock on January 8, 1964. A mixture of fact and legend is woven around him. Even stripped of fanciful invention, Dodd's story is one of personal courage and human pathos. His death highlighted the cruelty of a war that was no respector of youth or fortitude. Moreover, Dodd's death and the legends which cling to it are a revealing study in Arkansas history and folklore.

The future folk-hero was born on November 10, 1846, in Victoria, Lavaca County, Texas, where his parents had emigrated earlier in the year from Arkansas. A sister, Senhora, was two years older, and another sister Leonora, was born in 1849. In 1849 or 1850 the Dodds moved to Burleson County, Texas, where they kept a store. They moved back to Arkansas in 1858 and settled in Benton. In 1861 or 1862 the family removed to Little Rock, where David attended St. John's Masonic College. A handsome youth, somewhat slight for his age, he was a favorite among young ladies in the town. He became sick with malaria and left school but took a job in Snow and Ketcham's telegraph office in Little Rock.(1)

In July or August of 1862, David and Andrew, his father, went to Monroe, Louisiana, where David accepted employment in a telegraph office

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* The author is Oppenheim Regents Professor of History at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. This paper was given at the 1978 meeting of the Arkansas Historical Association in Pine Bluff.

1 Dallas T. Herndon, Letters of David O. Dodd with Biographical Sketch (Little Rock, Ark., n.d), 3; manuscript returns of the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, District of Burleson and Brazos, Burleson County, Texas, Texas State Library, Austin, Texas.