Scott County Arkansas Biographies

GOODSPEED BIOGRAPHIES
Contributed by Charlene Holland

Biographical & Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas
The Southern Publishing Company, Chicago and Nashville, 1891.

THOMAS M. DUNCAN

Thomas M. Duncan, the circuit clerk of Scott County, Ark., is a gentleman of wide experience, who has been actively interested in politics from his youth up. He was born at Fort Smith, Ark., in 1864, being the eldest of five children born to Samuel K. and Isabella (Gilbreath) Duncan, the former born in Kentucky and the latter in Arkansas. During the Rebellion Samuel K. Duncan came to Arkansas and located at Fort Smith, but after a very short residence there, came to Scott County, and has since been a resident of Waldron, near which place he has been engaged in wagon-making. Thomas M. Duncan was reared in this county and until he was fifteen years of age he was a regular attendant at school. At that age he entered the office of the circuit court clerk, and until 1887, server as deputy, being then appointed by the Governor to fill the office left vacant by the death of Clerk J.C. Gilbreath. At the special election he was elected to the position, reelected in the fall of 1888, and again in 1890, which fact speaks louder than words can do as to his ability as an official. He is a consistent Democrat, has always been an active worker for that party, and has always been deeply interested in the current issues of the day. Socially he belongs to Waldron Lodge No. 132 of the A. F. & A. M. He is bound to rise in the world, for he is industrious, intellectual and honest, and of strictly moral habits.