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calsfoundation@cals.org
Abramson Family Papers Open to Researchers
The CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies’ recently processed Abramson family papers showcase the personal and business life of a prominent family from Holly Grove in Monroe County, Arkansas. They owned vast tracts of land in Monroe and Lee Counties, much of which was worked by tenant farmers, and also owned and operated the cotton gin, the bank, the hardware store, and the movie theater in Holly Grove.
Rudolph and Rachel Abramson came to Arkansas after the Civil War, arriving in Monroe County at a time when the railroad was reshaping agriculture and farming life throughout the United States. They began investing in the community and the surrounding rich farmland.
Their daughter Venda, born in 1882, created trouble for genealogists by marrying a man with the same name as her father. Her husband, the younger Rudolph Abramson, usually went by the nickname Rue. He had come to San Francisco, California, with his parents David and Augusta in 1884. At the time, their last name was Czernejewski, but by the 1900 federal census they had changed their last name to Abramson. After marrying Venda, Rue was brought into the family business, R. Abramson Company; when his father-in-law died in 1917, he became sole proprietor of the company. Rue and Venda had a son and two daughters, whom they named Ralph, Janiece, and (of course) Venda.
After completing public school in Holly Grove, Ralph Abramson attended Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Virginia, for a year, then became a student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he attended Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He practiced law in Holly Grove and also joined the family business. Following the path of his Jewish father and grandfather, Ralph was a member of Temple Beth El in Helena. Also like them, he was involved in Sahara Temple (Masonic) in Pine Bluff, the Boy Scouts of America, the American Red Cross, and several other civic organizations. When the First National Bank of Holly Grove closed in 1932, a casualty of the Great Depression, the Abramson family used its own resources to cover the bank’s obligations to its investors. They succeeded at keeping the local economy functioning through the course of the Depression.
The Abramson family papers contain business records of R. Abramson Company, including business correspondence and land records, as well as accounts of the Grove Theater in Holly Grove. While the internal accounts of the bank are not included in the collection, the bank records of family members and of the business illustrate the changing shape of the local economy. Family and business financial records depict the changing face of taxation during the first half of the twentieth century, with receipts for poll taxes (which the business sometimes paid for its tenant farmers), property taxes, and the new national income tax during World War I. Family correspondence and school papers are also in the collection, along with accounts and mementoes of family vacations and travels.
Rue Abramson used a bank account register as a travel notebook for an excursion the Abramsons took in their family car in 1925. Leaving Holly Grove on July 20, they spent seven weeks visiting eleven states, seeing the Ozark Mountains, Yellowstone National Park, and the Pacific Ocean, among other landmarks. Rue’s record shows that the family traveled 5,717 miles, purchasing 496 gallons of gasoline, replacing seventeen quarts of motor oil, having ten tires repaired, having the battery replaced once in Kansas, and being towed once in Arizona. Gasoline prices ranged from 18 cents a gallon in Dallas, Texas, to 35 cents a gallon in Wendover, Utah. In many of their stops, they also had to pay 50 cents for overnight parking. Details like these, found in the collection, help researchers compare today’s experiences to those of our predecessors one hundred years ago.
To access the Abramson family papers, visit the Research Room in the CALS Roberts Library; visiting information is available at https://robertslibrary.org/visit/location-hours/. The finding aid is available online at https://arstudies.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/findingaids/search/searchterm/bc.mss.23.10.
By Steve Teske, archivist at the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies/Roberts Library
