Sir Henry Morton Stanley

The man who became Sir Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales, in 1841, to an unmarried 18-year-old who left him to be raised by his grandfather. When his grandfather died, the five-year-old went to the St Asaph workhouse. In New Orleans in 1859 he took the name Stanley, saying a wealthy trader had adopted him, though historians dispute that story. Years after Arkansas, he worked for King Leopold II in the Congo, building the Congo Free State, whose rubber system relied on forced labor and produced well-documented abuses. He died in London in 1904.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Davidsonville Historic State Park — 8.6 mi
  The ghost-town site of Arkansas's first post office, courthouse and federal land office, on the Black River, with open-frame outlines of the courthouse and a dogtrot house.
• Powhatan Historic State Park — 15 mi
  A river port and county seat on the Black River whose 1888 courthouse, 1873 jail, log house and academy still stand where they were built, with a state archives branch in the same park.
• Crowley's Ridge State Park — 23 mi
  A 1933 state park on the loess hills of Crowley's Ridge, built around Benjamin Crowley's homestead spring and the stone-and-log pavilion, dam and cabins of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

More markers nearby

• Randolph County Court House — steps away
• Wear Kibler Schoonover 1910-1982 — steps away
• The Pocahontas Civil War River Walk Memorial — steps away
• Pitman's Ferry — 0.2 mi