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General R.M. Knox

  • Ninfa O. Barnard
  • 1 day ago
  • 3 min read

General Richard Morris Knox was a Confederate veteran who became one of Pine Bluff’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen, establishing and running a major dry goods store for 34 years, and helping to found and manage the Citizens’ Bank.


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Image Credit: www.wikitree.com


Richard Morris Knox was born in Milan, Tennessee, on April 25, 1838, to Sarah Higgins Knox and Absalom Knox. In 1947, his family moved to Sardis, Mississippi. At the age of 20, Knox moved back to Milan, where he found a job working at the city’s first dry goods store. In January 1961, he became a store clerk in Batesville, Mississippi. In June 1861, he enlisted in the First Mississippi Cavalry with his older brother William H. Knox. Three of Knox’s five other brothers, John Levi Knox, Dr. Nicolas Calvin Knox, and James Patterson Knox,  also served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. 


Knox served under Generals Earl van Dorn and Nathan Bedford Forrest. He participated in all the battles in which his commanders were engaged, including the Battle of Shiloh. He also participated in other major battles including the Holly Springs Raid (Mississippi), the Siege of Corinth (Mississippi), the Battle of Nashville(Tennessee), the Battle of Corinth (Mississippi), the Battle of Selma (Alabama), the Battle at Atlanta (Georgia), and the Battle of Franklin (Tennessee). At the Battle of Selma, Knox escaped even as three-fourths of his unit was captured. Amazingly, even though two horses were shot beneath him as he rode, Knox was never wounded or taken prisoner during the war. 


At the end of the Civil War in 1865, Knox planted corn on a parcel of land he had purchased during the war. After harvesting his crop, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee. In Memphis, he became a salesman for the wholesale Rice-Styx Dry Goods company. In July 1871, he moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, after having saved enough money to start his own business. 

From 1871 to 1905, Knox ran a mercantile business in Pine Bluff, becoming a prominent citizen and leader. 


Knox was one of the founders and the first vice president and director of the Citizens’ Bank until his death. He was also a director of the Pine Bluff company and helped run the R. M. Knox and Knox-Walker Furniture companies. Knox was an active Confederate veteran. He attended twelve consecutive previous Confederate veteran reunions. 


Knox died on January 1, 1915, at the age of seventy-seven after a prolonged sickness. A news article in the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic said the following about his death, “His very long residence in Pine Bluff, his prominence in commercial and financial circles here for more than a third of a century, had served to make him personally known to representatives of all classes of citizens in Pine Bluff and in the country surrounding, for a considerable distance.”



R.M. Knox House


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Image Credit: preservearkansas.org


In 1885, Knox built a two-story wood-frame house at 1504 West 6th Street just as Pine Bluff was entering its “Golden Era.” Knox’s house boasted a T-shaped floor plan, a cross-gable roof,  a mansard-roofed tower rises the house’s center, and an elaborately decorated two-story porch that extends across the front of the house. Today, Knox’s home is one of the best examples of the Eastlake Victorian architecture in Arkansas. 


In 1975, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house was owned by the Knox family until the 1990s. Sadly, today the house is vacant and in an advanced state of deterioration because of a lack of funds.





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Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard



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