The Controversial Rector

Henry Massie Rector was the state’s sixth governor. He was part of Arkansas’s political dynasty during the antebellum period, but he was not always comfortable in that role and played a part in its downfall.
Henry Rector was born on May 1, 1816, at Fontaine’s Ferry near Louisville, Kentucky, to Elias Rector and Fannie Bardell Thurston. He was the only one of their children to survive to maturity. Elias Rector, one of the numerous Rectors who worked as deputy surveyors under William Rector, the surveyor-general for Illinois and Missouri, served in the Missouri legislature in 1820 and as postmaster of St. Louis, Missouri. He also surveyed in Arkansas and acquired, among other speculations, a claim to the site of the hot springs in the Ouachita Mountains prior to his death in 1822.
Rector received the rudiments of an education from his mother, but his formal schooling was limited to two years spent at Francis Goddard’s school in Louisville. His mother remarried …show more content…
In 1841, the bank having failed under his leadership, Rector moved to a plantation near Collegeville (Saline County) to farm and study law. In 1842, in obviously desperate straits, he accepted appointment from President John Tyler as U.S. marshal for the district of Arkansas, a position he held throughout Tyler’s term. (No one serious about a political future took a job under Tyler, but it was highly and briefly profitable since Arkansas generated a huge legal business, and marshals were paid by the fee system.) In 1848, he was elected to the Arkansas Senate, representing Perry and Saline counties. In his two terms, he devoted considerable attention to problems at the state penitentiary and acquired a reputation as a skilled debater. In 1852, he was chosen a Democratic presidential