Spurlins Ferry and Spurlin Cemetery (Garland County, Arkansas)

Garland County, Arkansas, which contains the city of Hot Springs, has two separately documented sites carrying the Spurlin name.

Spurlins Ferry (historical)

GNIS lists Spurlins Ferry (historical) as a crossing in Garland County, feature ID 64356, at about 34.445° N, 92.969° W.^[1] The "(historical)" label means the ferry no longer exists. No published history of the ferry was found. In early Arkansas, river ferries were usually run by someone who lived near the crossing, and they were often known by the owner's or operator's name.^[2]

Spurlin Cemetery

Spurlin Cemetery is a family burial ground on Papas Trail in the Hot Springs area. Find a Grave gives its coordinates as 34.4519° N, 93.0056° W.^[3] A transcription published by the Melting Pot Genealogical Society describes it as being on Papa's Trail off Shady Grove Road. It gives directions from Malvern Avenue (Highway 270 East) by way of Carpenter Dam Road and Shady Grove Road to Papas Trail, where the cemetery is about a block along on the left.^[4] Wikidata has an item for the cemetery, Q117620668, which records GNIS ID 55138 and Find a Grave cemetery ID 56383.^[5] Wikidata also has Spurlin Cemetery items for Fentress County, Tennessee (Q117627363), and Shelby County, Indiana (Q117619638); see Spurlin cemeteries for those and other burial grounds named for the family.^[6][7]

Transcriptions and indexes

Inez Cline read the cemetery on 11 October 1968 for Garland County, Arkansas Tombstone Inscriptions, Eastern Volume I, which she and Bobbie Jones McLane compiled in 1969.^[4] Martha Wilson read it again in 2002 or 2003. Patti Vance Hays made the current row-by-row transcription on 2 December 2010, adding details from funeral-home markers and the Caruth Funeral Home records for 1909–1970.^[4]

Find a Grave added the cemetery in 2000. In September 2026 it had 159 memorials, 90% with a grave photograph and 57% with GPS coordinates, plus one open photo request. The page also has two general views of the cemetery, uploaded in 2019 and 2023, but no written description.^[3] The Arkansas Gravestone Photo Project lists 175 photo records for the cemetery and flags veterans of the Civil War (Confederate), both World Wars and Korea.^[8]

Burials

Find a Grave lists 22 memorials with the Spurlin surname. Their recorded deaths run from about 1890 to the 2020s.^[9] At the centre of the Spurlin graves are James Frank Spurlin (died 3 March 1918) and his wife Sarah E. "Sallie" Johnson Spurlin (14 September 1846 – 5 May 1923).^[10][4] He has two markers that disagree on his birth year. Find a Grave gives his birth as 8 November 1846 and notes that one marker shows 1845 and the other 1846. It transcribes the inscription "PVT Co E 19 Arkansas Infantry CSA".^[10] The Melting Pot transcription gives 8 November 1845 and says the 1845 date is on his Confederate marker.^[4] His memorial links six children, all of whom have memorials in the same cemetery, among them Thomas William Berry Spurlin (1867–1926), Orlando Spurlin (1877–1977) and Walter C. Spurlin (1886–1969). Daughters who married into the Hicks and Johnson families are buried here too.^[10]

The earliest dated grave in Find a Grave's list is that of his son John F. Spurlin (1864 – about 1890). His memorial was created in 2022 and has no grave photograph. It says that he married Sopherina McDaniel in 1884 and probably died between 1888 and her remarriage in March 1891.^[11][12] Other early graves with surviving markers are those of Rissia Jewell Rogers (died 1894), Pearly May Rogers (died 1895) and Isaac Hicks (1839–1901).^[12][4]

Other burials include Elder Eugene E. Spurlin (1927–1988), whose marker notes 32 years in the ministry, and Henry Freeman Rice (1894–1919), whose marker records World War I service in the Navy.^[4] Frank Thomas Spurlin (1911–1994), a World War II private first class, has a marker here, but the transcription notes that he is buried at Shadowlawn Cemetery in Malvern, and Find a Grave flags his memorial as a cenotaph.^[4][9]

Family origins: a Hot Springs tradition

A WikiTree profile for James Spurlin (about 1810 – about 1846), born in Hardeman County, Tennessee, gives Hot Springs as his place of death. It includes descendant-supplied notes saying he was a sheriff or deputy who was killed "down by the river" while trying to break up a fight. According to the notes, his eldest son, William Rufus, set out to track the killer, found only the man's grave, and then settled in Texas.^[13] This is unverified family tradition (see Spurlins of Hardeman County, Tennessee).

WikiTree's family links tie the tradition to the cemetery. The James Spurlin profile lists among his children William Rufus Spurlin (4 August 1833 – 6 May 1899, died in Bell County, Texas) and James Franklin Spurlin (8 November 1846 – 3 March 1918).^[13] James Franklin's own profile, a GEDCOM import, gives his burial as Spurlin Cemetery, Hot Springs. It also records service as a private in the 19th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A., from 1862, and cites an Arkansas death certificate. These details match James Frank Spurlin, the Confederate veteran buried in the cemetery (see Burials above).^[14][10] Find a Grave has a memorial for William Rufus Spurlin with the same dates, in Killeen City Cemetery, Bell County, Texas. It transcribes an obituary saying he died at Brookhaven, Texas, and was buried at "the Sugar Loaf cemetery", a different name from the one on the memorial.^[15] If these user-contributed links are right, the family buried in Spurlin Cemetery descends from the James Spurlin of the Hot Springs story.

Land records

The General Land Office records include a patent dated 1 December 1875 to George W. Spurlin for land in Garland County. It covers the south half of the southeast quarter of section 2, township 3 south, range 19 west (accession STA-AR1480__.081).^[16] See Federal land patents to Spurlins.

Relationship between the sites

No source was found that links the ferry to the cemetery's Spurlin family. The published coordinates put the ferry site about 3.5 km (2 miles) east of the cemetery.^[1][3]