Biographies of the 1st Arkansas

  1stSgt Mike Lewis (retired)

Born December 1, 1810

Married: Ellen May Glover (a widow with five adult offspring & 1 grandson, 2 grandaughters)

Three adult children (from 1st wife who died in childbirth) one granddaughter

My family was originally from Germany.  We came to this country September 2, 1808.  My father was a soldier in Germany and promptly joined the U.S. Army, making it his career.  The family moved around trying to stay as close to father as was possible.  When he finished his service in the army we bought a farm and settled in the Territory of Arkansas around 1829.  When Arkansas became a state seven years later, I had already been a member of the United States army for ten years (lied about my age and joined at sixteen), I resigned from the army and returned to the family homestead to help train the Arkansas Militia.  Serving it proudly as a citizen soldier until Arkansas Seceded from the union in 1861.  While somewhat advanced in years the state needed experience men to train the newly formed Confederate Army.  I was torn by my loyalty to the country and army that I had so proudly served for all those years, but my love for the State of Arkansas was more overwhelming so I joined the 1^st Arkansas Regiment and am now serving in this “maddening war for States' Rights”

PVT. Robert "Hutch" Hutcheson

Born October 20th 1827
Married: Donna Louis Lawson December 15th, 1849
Two sons, Aaron Michael serving under Stewart somewhere in Virginia, and Robert Alan attached to a remote outpost in Oklahoma.

My father’s family came to this country from Ireland to escape the tyrannical reign of a dictator and had found what they thought was a peaceful life in Arkansas.  Ever the patriot, my Father joined the Army and fought in the Mexican-American War under Winfield Scott at the Battle of Veracruz and was present at the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  After the war he settled into a peaceful life as a farmer but was killed by radical anti-slave men from Kansas while he was helping a neighbor search for a runaway.
I tried to remain neutral in this conflict but when my home town of Pine Bluff formed the 1st Arkansas after Arkansas seceded, I had no clearer choice but to join up and do my part.  Make no mistake, I love my country, but I love Arkansas more.  I hope to be able to return to my farm and family, but am content in the knowledge that if I die serving this cause then my sacrifice will not have been in vain.  I pray we will win and be able to govern ourselves as God and our fore-fathers desired, but if we lose we will lose in the knowledge that we too stood up to a tyrannical dictator as our fathers did.

Pvt. Ben Hubbard

I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi on Feb. 6th, 1825 to a well-to-do-merchant family in the river-boat building company.  My parents put me in a circus headed north (claiming it would be the best place for someone with "my kind of ailment")  While on my journey, I was left at someplace called the Cadron settlement....further deteriorating my mental state. I was raised by a catfish farmer named Gerard Badonkadonk, a French settler. He had a similar "ailment" to myself,  He showed me the ways of the Arkansas River and I helped him to trade with the Quachita Indians. Their name for me was "Bear who did not hear". When I reached the age of twenty, the Cadron folks got tired of me and sent me to a relative in Arkansas to study at the local college. When the war broke out here in April, I wanted adventure; so I joined the 1st Arkansas. I am a devoted 36 year-old private.