Huntsville Massacre

On January 10, 1863, nine prisoners were taken from a guardhouse and shot on the Samuel P. Vaughn farm, northeast of Huntsville. Eight died: Chesley H. Boatright, William Martin Berry and his son Hugh Samuel Berry, John William Moody, Askin Hughes, John Hughes, Watson P. Stevens and Robert Coleman Young. Bill Parks survived. Company G of the 8th Missouri Cavalry, under Lt. Col. Elias Briggs Baldwin, did the shooting; Baldwin was arrested, but the charges were dropped. A Union colonel called it murder. The Masons, believing Isaac Murphy had a hand in the arrests, closed the college he headed.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Withrow Springs State Park — 4.7 mi
  A 54-degree spring that runs underground into War Eagle Cave and out to War Eagle Creek, on land Roscoe Hobbs gave the state in 1962, with float trips and an oak-hickory forest.
• Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area — 18 mi
  Arkansas's largest state park, about 12,000 acres on Beaver Lake, with the Van Winkle mill site, a graveyard of enslaved people, 54 miles of trail and regulated hunting.
• Whitaker Point (Hawksbill Crag) — 20 mi
  The one designated trail in the Upper Buffalo Wilderness leads to Hawksbill Crag, a bluff over the river's headwaters in a valley no one has lived in since 1948.
• Lost Valley Trail — 21 mi
  A box-canyon walk past a natural bridge, a 2,000-year-old bluff shelter and a 53-foot waterfall, the most popular hike in Buffalo National River.

More markers nearby

• Governor Isaac Murphy — steps away
• Madison County Government — steps away
• Van Winkle's Mill — 19 mi
• Berryville in the Civil War — 21 mi