John Henry Stuedle. and some Spain Veterans.

The following information is given by Historian Wanda M. Gray.
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The U.S. War with Spain in 1898, was one of the briefest in our history and required the fewest men, but did not leave Scott County men untouched. When the call went out from the President that Arkansas was to provide a thousand men, five patriotic adventuresome men, who were born in this county, volunteered immediately and at least seven others are buried here.

Twenty-five year old Charles L. Berry, enlisted in Company A, 1^st Arkansas Volunteer Infantry; Robert R. Morgan, who was born at the extinct village of Gipson just across the Poteau River south of Bates enrolled on 4 May 1898 and was assigned to Company A, 2^nd Arkansas Infantry; Thompson Epperson, a wagoner, from Boles got assigned to Company G 2^nd Arkansas Infantry; and Buck King and George J. Leming of Waldron were both assigned to Company D, 1^st Arkansas Infantry. None of these men made it to the famous battle for San Juan Hill in Cuba to lend support to the famous Lt. Colonel “Teddy” Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders”, as a matter of fact they only made it as far as a camp in Aniston, Alabama.

After the war, veteran John Henry Stuedle, of German descent a native of Lafayette County, Missouri made his home Scott County. At Higginsville, Missouri on May 4^th, 1898, he enrolled in Company K, 5^th Missouri Volunteer Infantry and only got as far as Kentucky before being mustered out with his regiment on Nov 9, 1898. In November of 1915, he married a local girl, JohnAnna Highfill, and they lived out their life in the once thriving Greenridge settlement, now referred to as Mt. Pleasant after the church, cemetery and township.

At the age of 90, on 24 February of 1965, Stuedle walked into the office of the Waldron News, and reminisced about his military days and showed the editor, Randel Grigsby, a letter and a ribbon sent to him by the Adjutant General of the State of Missouri in honor of his service as a Missouri Volunteer in the War with Spain.

It was only a year later that on 24 February 1966, that veteran John Henry Stuedle, a first generation German American passed from this life. His father was Balshasar Stuedle from Baden, Germany and his mother was Christina Dorothea Schwab from Wurtenburg, German. Two years later his wife, “Anna” followed him in death on 12 February 1968. They were both laid to rest in the peaceful and protected Mt. Pleasant Cemetery seven miles east of Waldron.