Tebbetts, Jonas M. (Jonas March), 1820-1914

Lawyer and judge of Fayetteville, Ark.

Jonas March Tebbetts was born in Rochester, N.H., in 1820 and was educated at the Western University of Pittsburgh, where he eventually became a professor. He left his job there and made his way out west as a teacher and steamboat worker. By 1839, he reached the Arkansas frontier, where he studied law. Tebbetts married Matilda Winlock, a Kentucky-born student attending the Fayetteville Female Seminary. In 1853, they built their home in Fayetteville. Tebbetts became a popular leader of the town, but as threat of war approached, he "made himself notorious" as a staunch Union supporter. In Mar. 1862, he was arrested by Confederate general Ben McCulloch and detained at Fort Smith (Sebastian County), but he was released after the death of General McCulloch at the Battle of Pea Ridge.Tebbetts returned to Fayetteville, but when he was warned of a plot to kill him, he escaped behind the Union lines in Missouri. In the fall of 1862, he returned to get his wife and children. Tebbetts returned to the North and died in 1914.

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