Swindled

About the Book

The turbulence of a wonderful time brought four railroads, several new towns, thousands of new residents, the first newspapers, and an untold number of other businesses to sparsely settled but timber-rich Wayne County. It commenced as logging of the county’s precious virgin timber (a good part of it pine) gained momentum after arrival of the first train in 1871, but glimpses of the excitement and the heartache, integral parts of it, have been preserved in the author’s recordings of the year-by-year happenings, often in the precise language used by the newspapers of that day to report them.

About the Author

Swindled is the last of five books retired weekly newspaper publisher Cletis R. Ellinghouse has written to describe historical milestones in the neighborhood that embraces the place of his birth, Wayne County. He practically grew up in the offices of his father’s newspapers at Greenville and Piedmont before earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Arkansas State University at Jonesboro in 1958. His writing career included stints on daily newspapers in three states before he returned to his home grounds to commence publishing weekly papers of his own at Bonne Terre, Jackson, Marble Hill, and Puxico, where he now resides.