Nicholas Walsey Mullen

(1879 - 1949) 

Early Years

Nicholas Walsey Mullen was born on March 1, 1879, in Grenada, Mississippi, to Hulda Elizabeth Howard, age 29, and Nicholas Reuben Mullen, age 30. He was named after his father, but everyone called him Walsey.

At this point in time, in the county of Carroll, the population consisted of blacks outnumbering whites by 4 to 3. The Reconstruction era had just come to an end, and although no battles had been fought on their actual soil, Carroll had seen some of the greatest losses in the state from the war. Fred M. Witty describes the citizens of the county during this time as “unexcelled by any in the State for genuine bravery and love of white supremacy”.

In addition, the town had just been hit hard by the Yellow Fever epidemic, where at least 363 people were recorded as dying from it in Grenada alone. Walsey was born just as the town was beginning to recover from the epidemic, both physically and economically.

He appeared in the census in 1880 in Carroll, Mississippi (about two miles west of Winona) with his parents, and two older siblings, Nellie (9) and Sammie (4), his widowed paternal aunt, Bettie McCorkle, her two daughters, Susan and Mizra, and a boarder named Robert Edward. They lived next door to his maternal grandparents, John and Elizabeth Howard and their three daughters (Hulda’s sisters).

His brother, William Frank Mullen, was born in October 1881 in Mississippi when Walsey was 2 years old.

His sister, S.B. Mullen, was born on March 7, 1884, in Carroll, Mississippi, when Walsey was 5 years old.

His brother H.B. Mullen was born in July 1886 in Mississippi when Walsey was 7 years old.

His brother James W. Mullen was born in March 1888 in Mississippi when Walsey was 9 years old.

1890’s

His brother Herbert H was born in July 1890 in Mississippi when Walsey was 11 years old.

1900’s

When he was 21, Walsey appeared in the census in 1900 in Carroll, Mississippi, living with his parents and six siblings and niece, E.M. Fielder. Nicholas was attending school during this time.

Walsey was married to 21 year-old Lillian Glynn Cowan in Montgomery, Mississippi, on May 23, 1905, when he was 26 years old. The marriage was celebrated at Lillian’s home near Duck Hill.

On April 6, 1906, their first child was born - Albert Maxwell Mullen.

His mother, Hulda, passed away on July 20, 1907, at the age of 57.

On November 2, 1907, their second child was born; another son - David Cowan Mullen.

His father, Nicholas, passed away on January 15, 1909, at the age of 60.

On August 19, 1909, their third child and first daughter was born - Mary Virginia Mullen.

1910’s

In 1910, Walsey and family were renting a home in Tie Plant, near Grenada, and he was working as a carpenter.

On August 14, 1911, their fourth child was born - Nellie Elizabeth Mullen.

In 1913, he worked at the Chicago-baseed Ayer and Lord Tie Company in Tie Plant, three miles south of Grenada. The plant employed 200-300 men and was the largest employer in the Grenada vicinity in the early 20th Century.

On October 3rd, their fifth child was born - Dorothy Lillian Mullen.

The war had been escalating in Europe, but President Woodrow Wilson declared that the United States remain "impartial in thought as well as in action.” In November of 1914, President Wilson won re-election under the slogan "He kept us out of the war", and yet the following spring the United States declared war on Germany, joining the allies in World War I and forever changing America's relationship with the world.

It was around 1916 that the Mullen family moved to Poplar Grove, Arkansas, about ten miles west of Lexa. Walsey and the boys first made the trip by buggy with their horse, Fleet, and her colt. Later, the family’s farm goods were shipped by train, along with Lillian and her three very young daughters. Walsey’s brother, Frank Mullen, had a home in Lexa, where he ran a store, and this is where the family stayed until their home was ready.

Their farmhouse was out in Marion Township next to Big Creek, about 12 miles west of Helena. There was, what they used to call, a “big gate” leading out to the front property of the house, with large oak trees in which the kids would play. There was a large porch on the front of the house that wrapped all the way around. Instead of a breezeway at the entrance, as was so common in those days, their home was closed in, with a bedroom to each side of the entry. On the right, Walsey and Lillian’s room. To the left, two additional bedrooms for the children. Further along was a dining room with the kitchen off of that. The home also had an earthen root cellar where Lillian would store all of her canning, potatoes, and other necessities for the winter, infusing them with a warm, earthy smell.

Lillian’s parents lived in a small house close to the family, and her father ran his blacksmith shop from their farm. He took care of all the harnesses, wheels, cultivator parts and other farm necessities. It was a blessing to have family so close to them, and the kids loved her Aunts Frank and Marion, who also lived with them. Walsey’s brothers would come out on to the farm on Sundays and they’d round up some of the farm chickens for a nice fried chicken dinner. On the days they wanted to splurge for a real treat, they would go into town to get some ice and make homemade ice cream.

The children walked about three miles from their farm to the local schoolhouse in Poplar Grove. When the horses weren’t in use on the farm, the children could ride them to school, where there was an area for them to be tethered, fed and watered while the kids were educated.

Every Sunday the family would attend the Methodist church, where Lillian played piano.

Sometimes Walsey and Lillian would make a trip into Helena for necessities, leaving the kids at the farm.

The country saw a mandatory sobering in January of 1919 with the ratification of the 18th Amendment. Suddenly, the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages was legally prohibited throughout the United States. Underground (and not so underground) bootleggers aside, this would remain official law for the next 14 years. Walsey didn’t keep alcohol in the home, whether by personal choice, or as a result of prohibition. The only time Dorothy could remember her father imbibing was the occasional eggnog during the holidays.

During Christmastime, Walsey would take the kids into town and give them each a quarter to buy whatever they wanted.

It was a time of great progress, but also a tumultuous time; race riots were breaking out throughout the country, dubbing the season the American Red Summer of 1919. Phillips County was no exception to the violence.

On September 30, 1919, what became known as the Elaine Massacre resulted in the death of hundreds of black residents, five white men, and the arrests of near 300 more. It all began during a disgruntled African-American sharecroppers meeting in the Hoop Spur church. They were protesting unfair low wages from landowners, and had enlisted the help of a white attorney from little rock to express their need for a fair wage. A shootout began in front of the church between armed black guards and a group of local white men in a parked car out front and quickly escalated into a far larger mob. The governor called for 500 soldiers from nearby Camp Pike to quell the uprising, with orders to “shoot to kill any negro who refused to surrender immediately.” Local vigil ante citizens joined in the fray and a dark history was written.

Twelve black men from the incident faced trial for murder and were immediately sentenced to death row. The NAACP launched a series of appeals that drug on for years, claiming their right to due process had been violated, until finally reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately, the court agreed, a drastic change from their former hands-off approach to previous such events. It later became viewed as one of the first events in the American Civil Rights movement. It is nearly impossible to imagine that this historical event didn’t have some great impact on the life of 40 year-old Walsey Mullen and his family, who were residing at the very epicenter of the violence.

1920’s

On August 10th 1920, their youngest child was born - Robert Nicholas Mullen.

In the summer of 1921 the Centennial Road Law was signed, leading to the construction of the first modern system of Missouri highways.

Walsey was a member of the National Farm Loan Association in 1922 in Helena. The associations consisted of groups of ten or more mortgage-holding farmer, who together owned 5% or more of a federal land bank. The purpose of the association was to align the incentives of individual farmers with that of the banks, as farmers held two roles: borrowers and lenders. 1922, Walsey was one of five on the board of directors of the Phillips County association.

In August of 1923, President Harding succumbs to a fatal illness and his office is replaced by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. Around this time, Nicholas was a dairy farmer in West Helena, Phillips, Arkansas.

The family lived in their farmhouse for several years before moving further east into the town of Barton. There, they lived off of what they called the “hard road”, their version of the highway. The children went to school at a little country school that went up through the eighth grade. Walsey and Lillian were determined for their children to have a decent high school education, so when Maxwell, the eldest of the children, was ready to attend high school, he went to stay with Lillian’s sister, Aunt Frank, in Helena and attended the high school there.

Around this time, as the other children started getting to high school age, the family sold their farmhouse and moved closer into the newly incorporated town of West Helena. This particular home was in more of a neighborhood, at the end of the street on the north side, and the family made quite the stir with the neighbors. Everyone wondered what the neighborhood was coming to with this country family and all of their kids moving in. Eventually, the Mullens won their neighbors over and became good friends with them - especially those across the street from them. Meanwhile, Walsey used the land behind their home to start a dairy farm. They used large cans and a funnel separator to remove the cream from the milk before bottling.

Eventually, Walsey traded in his farming for a job in the hardwood timber business, an industry that had sustained Helena up until this point in time. Early hardwood and lumber plants in town included the Helena Veneer Company, the Org Chair Company, Upton & Alger, the Southwestern Wagon Company, and the Dennison Sawmill. He owned horses and mules, and would go out and source large tracks of timber, haul them in to the nearest station, where they would then be transported by railroad. He bought tracts of land, walked through and surveyed the timber potential, and sometimes even just turned around and sold again immediately for great profits. The family prospered. Walsey would come home with bags of cash, dump it out on the floor and let all the kids count it. Instead of shopping in Helena, Walsey would take Lillian all the way to the big city of Memphis. They even brought home gifts for the kids.

During this time of prosperity, Walsey and his brother Herbert invested in some land off of the highway between West Helena and Barton where they began building brick homes for each family. Walsey bought a Buick, quite a grand car in comparison to the Ford Model-T they previously owned.

Then, tragedy struck.

The spring of 1927 brought in torrential rains to the area. Rivers and creeks began to flood, levees one after another broke, and the Mississippi grew to over 60 miles wide in sections. The Great Flood hit Arkansas the hardest with 14 percent of the state left under water. The entire infrastructure of Helena-West Helena was damaged, causing them to forfeit their place as the nation’s lumber market. Refugee camps were set up throughout the state, including in West Helena. President Herbert Hoover later dubbed it the “America’s greatest peacetime disaster,” claiming “the disaster felt by Arkansas farmers, planters and residents of river lowlands was of epic proportions.”

In the spring of 1928, Lillian became seriously ill with uterine cancer. She was treated at Memphis with radium implants. It was a procedure still in the trial phases, and resulted in internal damage to Lillian, leading to peritonitis from which she did not recover. Walsey took the children to the Memphis hospital, and each was given their own private time to say their goodbyes to their mother. She was 44 years old.

Under difficult circumstances, the Mullen family, moved into their newly constructed home. It had a living room, dining room, three bedrooms, and a partial basement and was worth $6,000.

Then, on October 29, 1929, the stock market plummeted, beginning what would later be known as the Great American Depression. The lumber market tanked, and difficult times turned dire for the Mullen family. Maxwell, David and Mary Virginia had gone off to college, and Walsey did what he could to make ends meet for the three children he had remaining at home. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before they lost the house Walsey had worked so hard to build for his family.

1930's

Around 1931, Walsey and family moved in with Lillian’s parents back in West Helena. Walsey took a job at a local mill, making just enough to keep the kids fed.

In 1932, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enters office with a landslide victory.

In December of 1933, prohibition officially ended.

On February 3, 1934, Walsey, married 38 year-old Mary Carruth, a friend of his who had a farm out near Poplar Grove where the family had originally lived. He moved in with her back in Poplar Grove, a small farm worth $700.

In the fall of 1939, the United States once again declared its neutrality in the European war.

1940's

In 1940, Nicholas was a farmer in Phillips, Arkansas. That September, amidst an escalating situation in Europe, the U.S. Congress enacted the first peacetime conscription draft.

A month later, F.D.R. wins his third presidential election, becoming the first man to hold office for three (and later four) terms.

He lived at R#1 in Poplar Grove, Phillips, Arkansas, in 1942. During this time, he was described as 5'7" tall, 165 pounds, blue eyes and grey hair with a ruddy complexion.

Then news hit of the terrifying and tragic Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. declaration of war that followed.

On April 12, 1945, at the height of the war, President Roosevelt died suddenly, and Vice President Harry S. Truman assumed the role of President. Four months later Truman issued orders for the use of the atomic bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to the surrender of the Japanese delegation and the end of WWII. 

It may have been a time of peace, but the conflict was not over. Instead, a new period of Cold War began and fear of the communist threat began to sneak into the American psyche.