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Ezekial Norris McCutcheon was born in Tennessee
in 1807. He grew up in Giles County, Tennessee and married Nancy
M. Hale when he was 18 or 19 years of age. The family lived in
Giles County where they farmed until 1843 when they moved to the
just recently formed Newton County, Arkkansas, making the journey
by ox team which took two months. they settled on Cave Creek and
was soon recognized as one of the most prosperous farmers and
stockmen in the country.
When E.N. McCutcheon, with his family, moved to Newton County,
this was really new country. Arkansas had been a state only seven
years and the settlements in the Ozark Mountain counties were few
and far between. Newton County was and still is the most remote
county in the state. There were no roads, only Indian and animal
trails, and the nearest trading center, Springfield, Missouri,
was more than one hundred miles away. A few families, most of
them kinfolk from Giles County Tennessee, had settled on Cave
Creek, a tributary of the Buffalo Fork of White River, but there
were less than ten families living in Polk Township, an area of
more than 120 square miles, when E.N. and his family moved in. Up
until a few years prior to the arrival of these few settlers,
this had been Indian country, used largely as a hunting area
rather than for permanent settlement.
There is no indication that the families came as a caravan, but
it seems that they just trecked in one or two or three familes at
a time. One of the Hale families had come in 1840 and one of the
Cook families came at or about the same time. No record was found
that any other family came thru at the time the E. N. McCutcheon
family did.
When E.N. McCutcheon and his family came to Newton County, living
here was not easy. There were no Doctors, no roads, no means of
communication, no mills near, and the closest store where needed
supplies could be obtained was several miles away. The nearest
postoffice was established at Cave Creek, four miles distant from
where they lived. After a road was chopped out through the
wilderness, it took freight wagons ten to fifteen days to make
the trip to and from Springfield, Missouri. Sometimes White River
and Buffalo River would get past fording and the frieght wagons
would be gone for more than a month.
Although living was not easy, making a living was not difficult.
The country abounded in such big game as bear and deer and with
what appeared to be an unlimited amount of wild turkey, squirrel,
rabbit, quail, and such furbearing animals as raccoon, opposum,
mink, and other species of wildlife. There was an abundance of
edible wild salads, wild berries, wild plums, cherries, crab
apples and other edibles which required little effort to gather
and prepare. Cave Creek was at that time a good fishing stream
and was capable of producing more fish than these early settlers
could use. Cattle and hogs became fat on open range. For many
years the forest and streams provided most of the food supply for
these early settlers. (from THE MCCUTCHEON TRACE by Hildagarde
Smith, copyright applied for 1964)