The city of Yellville is the county seat of Marion County in northern Arkansas and is located on Crooked Creek. Marion County was created in 1836, the same year that Arkansas became a state. Shawneetown was designated the county seat, but the residents sought a new name. They chose to name the city Yellville in honor of Archibald Yell, the new state’s first representative in the U.S. Congress. Yell was elected Arkansas’s second governor in 1840. A community tradition states that Yell wanted the city to be named for him and offered city leaders fifty dollars for the honor, but he never paid them. In 2005, two of Yell’s descendants—David Yell from Michigan and Sonny Yell from Georgia—visited Yellville and gave the city a gift of fifty dollars in the name of their ancestor (Teske, 2019).
Citation
Teske, Steven. (2019, Sep. 14). Yellville (Marion County). Retrieved from encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
How it all Began 