Elisha White

Elisha White was among the earliest European settlers on land that would become the city of Little Rock, Arkansas. White purchased the preemption claim of William Lewis for ten dollars in 1812 and then resold it two years later for forty dollars to another pioneer Wright Daniels, who in turn sold it to Reuben Blunt who sold it to Benjamin Murphy. The claim was eventually purchased by a group of investors led by St. Louis speculator William Russell.

White did not settle permanently in the Little Rock area. The first permanent settler was Edmund Hogan who arrived in 1818.

References

• Dallas Tabor Herndon, Centennial History of Arkansas (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1922), 820.
• Ira Don Richards, Story of a Rivertown: Little Rock in the Nineteenth Century (1969), 6.