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Col. Robert MARTIN, one of the most prominent citizens of
Dallas County, owes his nativity to Wilkes County, N. C.,
where he was born February 4, 1819, and is the son of William
and Matilda (MITCHELL) MARTIN, natives of North Carolina,
also. The father was born November 6, 1786, and died November 3, 1867, when
eighty-one years of age. He married in North Carolina in
1805, to Miss MITCHELL, who was born in 1776, and who died
December 22, 1855, when sixty-nine years of age. They emigrated
from North Carolina to Alabama, in 1820, located in Madison
County, and there resided until the autumn of 1855, when
they came to Arkansas to live with their son, the subject
of this sketch. The parents were devoted Christian people,
Baptists in sentiment, but not members of any church. He
was a Whig in politics, and until the war was a Union man,
but when the crash came he was with the South. He was a soldier
in the War of 1812, and was the son of Robert MARTIN, who
occupied a prominent position in North Carolina, at different
times, being clerk the principal part of his life, and also
holding other official positions of prominence. Robert MARTIN
was in the Revolutionary War, under Gen Washington, and died
in Wilkes County, N. C. The MARTIN family was of Irish, and
the MITCHELL family of Scotch descent. The maternal grandfather
of our subject, Andrew MITCHELL, was born in Iredell County,
N. C., followed farming in that State the principal part
of his life, and there received his final summons. Col. Robert
MARTIN, the eldest son and sixth child of twelve children,
received a very liberal education at Huntsville, Ala., graduating
at the Huntsville Academy, and in 1839, he turned his attention
to the general mercantile business until 1860. He was unusually
successful, and at that time had made up his mind to retire. Before the war
he was colonel of the State Militia, and after that he became
the conscript officer. On October 12, 1863, he was taken
prisoner by Col. Powel Clayton, but was soon afterward released.
In 1866 Mr. MARTIN went to Pine Bluff, and again engaged
in commercial life with the firm known as Lee, Martin & Co., but failed,
financially. He afterward paid up all his ineptness. Since 1867 he has been farming,
and is the owner of large tracts of land, 4,000 acres or more. Many years previous
to the war, or on March 13, 1844, he married Miss Mary SMITH, a native of Granville
County, N. C., born April 10, 1826, and the daughter of Dr. William S. SMITH
of Lincoln County, Tenn. To this union the following children were born: Thomas
B. (a prominent attorney of Little Rock), Smith C. (an attorney at Pine Bluff),
Richard H. (at home), William S. (who died in infancy), James R. (deceased, was
an attorney), and Dr. John W. (who died at Collins Station, Ark.). Col. MARTIN
and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, she having been
a member for fifty years or more. He is a Democrat in his political preferment,
and socially is a member of the Masonic fraternity. In 1877 he was elected to
represent Dallas County in the Legislature, and has held other positions of note.