Blytheville, Ark. had never seen so many folks before. On Ross Hughes’s farm there were 15,000 of them—come from as fur away as Texas to see the first annual cotton-picking championship of the U. S.

Ben Pearson, who was born at Paron in Saline County in 1898, became known as the Father of Modern Archery. In the 1920s, Pearson made his first bow. He finished next-to-last at the 1926 state archery ...