The Latta House

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The Latta House (1832). Perhaps the oldest home still standing in NW Arkansas is the Latta House (log cabin). In 1831, John Latta, two black slaves named Dan and Ben, and several other family members collected wagons, teams, pine lumber (from Tennessee), and tools. Using two rafts, they floated all their equipment down the Tennessee River into the Ohio River, then down the Mississippi River. When they arrived at the mouth of the Arkansas river, they hired a government steamboat to toll them up the river to Phillips Landing, now Van Buren. From that point they freighted their things 45 miles north to a settlement already begun by Captain Lewis Evans (later called the community of Evansville).

Most of the work on the Latta house seems to have been finished in 1832. For in the following year, the rest of his family along with the families of his slaves (about 30 in all) completed their westward migration to their new home. Today the Latta house can be viewed and toured at the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, where it was relocated in 1958 (History of Washington County, pp. 79-82). Directly behind the Latta House (The Lord's Vineyard) marker below is a log cabin which was the kitchen (separate from the main structure) for the Latta House. To the right is a small smoke house.

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