32 I've Got Some Swamp Land to Sell You

Elizabeth Nolen – Maternal 3rd Great-Grandmother

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 32 – August 5, 2025

Prompt: Wide Open Spaces

Elizabeth Nolen’s maiden name remains a mystery. She was the wife of Anslum Nolen, and I have assumed they married around 1822 in Tennessee. Their first six children were born there between 1822 and 1835, including my 2nd great-grandfather, Parmenas James “Pet” Nolen, born in 1831. From 1835 to 1847, five more children were born in Marshall County, Mississippi.

The 1850 census lists Elizabeth’s birthplace as North Carolina, about 1800, but the 1860 census states Tennessee, about 1797. She died sometime between 1861, when she signed her will, and 1866, when her estate entered probate in Woodruff County, Arkansas. The only census record I have found for Anslum is from 1850, which gives his birthplace as Virginia around 1786. He died about 1852 in Mississippi.

The Nolens understood the value of land. An 1837 tax record for Hardin County, Tennessee, shows they owned land worth $300 and had one slave. In 1840, Anslum purchased 160 acres in Marshall County, Mississippi—the first recorded owner of land that had belonged to the Indians. By 1850, it was valued at $650. The 1850 slave schedule lists four slaves, likely a couple with two young children.

By 1860, Elizabeth was a widow living in Richland Township, St. Francis County, Arkansas, with her four youngest children, ages 17 to 23. The nearest post office was in Cotton Plant, in Woodruff County—a rich cotton-producing area. She is listed in the census as a farmer with $600 in real estate, likely growing cotton. Elizabeth also appears in the 1860 slave schedule index, though the number of enslaved people is not given.

Before settlement, Woodruff and St. Francis Counties were densely forested, laced with bayous, sloughs, and swamps. The area’s fertile soils drew settlers, who cleared the land for row crops.

The Federal Swamp Land Act of 1850 aimed to transfer federally owned swamplands into private hands. It defined swampland in part as “those swamp and overflowed lands which may be or are unfit for cultivation…” The act ultimately ceded about 65 million acres to more than a dozen states. Arkansas, the third-largest recipient after Florida (20.3 million acres) and Louisiana (9.4 million acres), received over 7.6 million acres. States sold these lands—often at little cost—on the condition that they be drained and made productive, usually for agriculture.

Volumes like these once recorded Arkansas's swamp land purchases - including 43 acres my 3rd great grandmother Elizabeth Nolen bought for seventy-five cents an acre in 1861. 

On July 18, 1861, Elizabeth applied to purchase 43 acres of “Swamp and Overflowed Land” at 75 cents an acre. The tract was described as the NE 1/4 of NE 1/4 Sec 2 T5N R3W. I located it on a map: it lies between Howell and the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters. In the 1860s, this land was in St. Francis County; it became part of Woodruff County in 1870. Today, the refuge serves as an overwintering home for ducks.

When I visited the area in January 2016, I saw many fields flooded for the season—and plenty of duck hunters taking advantage of it.

It’s hard to picture Elizabeth’s 43 acres in 1861—likely a mix of soggy bottomland and dense timber—but she must have seen its potential. Today, it’s part of a thriving wildlife refuge, valued far beyond its agricultural worth. And while the phrase “I’ve got some swamp land to sell you” is usually a joke, in Elizabeth’s case, it was no joke at all. She really did buy Arkansas swamp land—43 acres of it—for just seventy-five cents an acre.

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