Author: Emily Snyder Major: History, Latino and Latin American Studies
Emily Snyder, Researcher and Intern for Peel Mansion Museum
Emily Snyder is a History and Latino and Latin American Studies major in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. After graduation, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in museum studies. She did her research under the mentorship of Louise Hancox in the Honors College during the Spring 2021 semester.
The Peel Mansion in Bentonville, AR has suffered in the past from its lack of a clear narrative to tell visitors that does not revolve around a lost cause mythology and glorification of the men who fought for the Confederacy. I was asked to do research surrounding the social history of the Peel family to create a better understanding of the family during the time period that they built and occupied their mansion home in order to create a new narrative that more directly focused on the family and the stories that are most often left out of history, especially the women of the family. It was important to the Peel Mansion that this research was grounded in factual evidence that would be accessible to future researchers, as much of the information they have cannot be concretely proven as fact and instead veers towards the anecdotal. These requests led me to the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections, where I examined the Berry, Dickinson, and Peel Family Papers, as well as a few other key papers of Peel family members. The primary documents found in these papers were most often related to the economic and political activities of the family, however there were some that helped build an understanding of the social history of the family, such as photographs, genealogical notes, and letters. These materials, along with secondary sources that analyzed the historical circumstances that the Peel family would have experienced, helped me to create a new narrative for the Peel Mansion that created a fruitful and factual interpretation of the history of the family and how that history can be viewed through the mansion itself.
The Peel family’s social history does revolve around the Civil War and the patriarch of the family, Samuel West Peel, serving as a colonel in the Confederate Army. This position garnered him the attention of Governor Baxter after the war, who appointed him to the position of prosecuting attorney, which ultimately led to a successful legal and political career, where he would eventually serve in Congress as a representative of Arkansas. These positions changed the family’s social status, giving them the wealth and resources necessary to build a fifteen-room mansion surrounded by a hundred acres of apple orchards. It also allowed the Peel children to have greater access to more impressive educational and employment opportunities previously unavailable to them, as Samuel himself only received about three months of schooling. The Peel’s oldest son, James McFerrin Peel, served as prosecuting attorney of the 4th judicial circuit. Their second son, David Walker Peel, was the President of the First State Bank of Arkansas in Bentonville. Their third son, Frank West Peel, attended the University of Virginia, a prestigious university far from their home. One of the Peel daughters, Katherine, likely attended Galloway College, a Methodist school for the higher education of young women in Searcy, Arkansas. She also worked with her father in Washington, D.C. when he served as a Congressman. These educational and employment opportunities of the children demonstrate the status and resources of the family also visible in their ability to build the Peel Mansion.
This understanding of the family was not clear to me right away, and instead required a restructuring of how I was approaching the research to reach these conclusions. I had expected to find the information the Peel Mansion wanted within Special Collections and believed there would be some indication of who Mary Emaline, the matriarch of the family that the museum hoped to highlight more, was. However, little could be directly gained from the materials, and just as throughout history, the Peel women had been left out because their stories were considered insignificant. This generally extended to their entire social history, as the most important thing in their history appeared to be Samuel Peel’s political and legal career and his connection to Governor James H. Berry, brother of Mary Emaline. I stopped trying to find primary sources that were not there and instead focused on what I did know. On the recommendation of my mentor, Louise Hancox, I began to view the Peels and Mary Emaline as who they really were, a family and wife of a prominent politician with reach beyond Bentonville, Arkansas. With this new view of the family, the primary sources began to make more sense, as the manifestations of the wealth and status this family had because of this understanding of their position. This research experience taught me quite a bit about historical research that, despite doing research previously, I had not learned before. I learned to connect the primary sources and secondary sources available to me to interpret the history I was researching. More importantly, though, I learned to trust the interpretation of the history that I came up with, knowing that I had come to a sound conclusion that was supported by ample evidence. I find great value in knowing that I can create new and accurate understandings of history. I am excited to be able to offer the Peel Mansion museum a new interpretation of their history, and for the fact that future researchers will continue to build on this interpretation to create greater knowledge about early Bentonville and Arkansas as well. I will continue to work on research and interpretation for the Peel Mansion museum this summer as a paid intern, and I am excited to continue to develop this narrative for the museum.