George F. Baucum

George Franklin Baucum was a grocer, Civil War veteran, and president of the Bank of Little Rock and Little Rock Trust Company Savings Bank.

Baucum was born to Daniel and Kathryn Baucum on February 1, 1837, in St. Charles, Missouri. He spent part of his childhood in Marshall County, Mississippi, before moving with his family to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1851 and Searcy, Arkansas, in 1853. There he became a grocer. At the outbreak of the Civil War Baucum organized a company for the Confederate cause, enlisted in Company A of Desha's Arkansas Infantry, and eventually rose to the rank of colonel. Baucum fought at the battles of Perryville, Tullahoma, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Ringgold Gap, and battled Sherman on his March to the Sea.

At the Battle of Atlanta he was shot in the face and badly wounded. Thereafter he served as a recruiting officer. He surrendered to federal forces at Grenada, Mississippi, in June 1865. After the war Baucum returned to reopen a grocery business in Searcy with G. B. Greer. In 1876 he moved the business to Little Rock in partnership with R. A. Little and J. M. Percival. The wholesale grocer was known as G. F. Baucum & Company. The grocery was supported by a plantation ten miles to the east at the present site of the town of Baucum on U.S. Highway 165.

Baucum was a co-founder of the Arkansas Board of Trade.

Baucum died on July 29, 1905. He married twice, the first time to Glovenia B. Critz. Shortly after the death of his first wife in 1874, Baucum married Rebecca D. McRae. He had three daughters, one with his first wife and two with his second. Baucum House, a family residence, is located at 202 Izard Street. Baucum House is a Steamboat Gothic-style mansion.

References

• United Daughters of the Confederacy, United Daughters of the Confederacy (Turner Publishing Company, 1999), 49.