History:

One hundred years ago in 1885, the James H. Srygley and some 60 to 70 other families migrated from Northwest Alabama to Coal Hill, Arkansas.The names of "the other" families are not available because no records were made of them.

The ones that we do know, handed down from one generation to the next, and from personal recollection are as follows: two other Srygley families, two Coats, five or six Flake, three Sams, two Sandlin, three Wallis, one Morgan, three Quillin, one Kimbrough, one Mayhall, one Miller, one Linsey, one Oden, two Blankenships, four Hill, and one Sexton.

The communities from which these families came are Rock Creek, Barton, Cherokee, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and others from Northwest Alabama. The one person responsible for this movement was F. G. "Bud" Srygley. He was the land agent for the Iron Mountain Railroad. His job was to see about the right-of-way for the railroad and all the sixteenth sections that the U. S. Government gave to the railroad. It was the policy to give a railroad all the sixteenth sections from a strip of land 5 miles on each side of the right-of-way.

When Mr. Srygley got to Coal Hill, he thought it was the place he had been looking for. He and his father-in-law, Mr. Oden, formed a land company and bought all the east end of Coal Hill and a strip of land running north to the north boundary of section 16.

He returned to Alabama and persuaded all his father's family and as many of the relatives and some others to come to this new found "promised land."