282
There was also a very good school at New London, in Harrison Township, to which some of the children from Lapile Community were sent. In later years after the War Between the States a very good school was established in the southern part of Lapile Township near the Doneghey home. This was the school in which Governor Doneghey received his elementary education. It was also the school in which the beloved Mrs. Betty Goldsby taught.
There was an aura of romance about Mrs. Goldsby, the widow of the dashing Miles Goldsby. Sometime before bringing her, a bride from the North, Miles Goldsby had been involved in a love affair that was frowned upon by the mother of the young girl. In order to end the romance the mother took her daughter back to New Orleans, from whence they had come, when young Miles was away from home on business. The daughter, Ann Portesque Harrison, in a effort to explain her absence to the man whom she so relunctantly had given up, wrote the beautiful old song "In the Gloaming." Her words, addressed to Miles Goldsby, were made to rhyme by her friend Meta Orred, to whom she told her story, while she wrote the music. The hero of the song did not live many years after it was written but his widow was an inspiration to many young lives in Lapile Township where she went to teach school after the war was over.
When War Between the States was declared Lapile like all other communities in the Southland gave of her best. There was no hesitation on the part of the young men to respond to the call to arms. The majority joined Company G. of the Ninth Arkansas regiment, other went with the various different commands in the Confederate Army. Only the very old men, the very young boys and the women were left "to keep the home fires burning."
Some slave owners, too old to fight, took their slaves to Texas to give them better protection and to put them to work raising cotton which could be taken across the border and sold in Mexico for gold. There was no available market for cotton grown in Arkansas during the conflict and Texas had plenty of spare land for the visiting cotton grower to cultivate.
