Robert W. Glover

Robert W. Glover, sometimes known as Bob Glover (November 15, 1866 – March 29, 1956), was a Baptist pastor and a Democratic politician from Sheridan in Grant County in south Arkansas.

Background

Glover's ancestors may have included a previous Robert Glover of England, burned at the stake for his religious convictions. Another possible ancestor, John Glover, was a brigadier general in the American Revolution under General George Washington.

Glover's grandfather, Delany L. Glover (1814–1885) was born in South Carolina and came to Arkansas from Hamilton County, Tennessee after 1852. He and his family settled on the Fourche Creek southwest of Little Rock, where he established a sawmill. The Glovers cut much of the timber that went into the early buildings of Little Rock. Later they moved to the Palestine Community north of Sheridan. Delany Glover was a postmaster in the Belfast Community in Saline County and later operated a gristmill in Sheridan until his death.^[1]

Glover's father, William Harrison Glover (1836–1906), a veteran of the Confederate Army, established a sawmill in Sheridan. W. H. Glover was married to the former Margaret Caroline Crowson (born 1838).^[2] In 1870, William H. Glover moved to the Philadelphia Community south of Prattsville, where he cleared a large farm and established another mill there, powered by water and located on Polk Creek.^[3]

Robert W. Glover was born in the Palestine Community, lived for a time in the Belfast Community and was reared mostly in the Philadelphia Community. On July 4, 1889, he married the former Mary Ann Young (1870-1953), daughter of Samuel Young from Mississippi and Eleanor Louisa Thompson, and purchased 138 acres of his father's farm to start his own agricultural operation.^[4]

Political experience

Early in the 20th century, Glover, who resided with his family in a large, old house in Sheridan, served in the Arkansas House of Representatives (1905–1910) and the Arkansas State Senate (1911–1912) from Grant County.^[5] In 1909, Representative Glover sponsored the legislative bill to establish agricultural colleges in Arkansas.^[6][7] One of those schools, Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, since a comprehensive university in northeastern Arkansas, was established in 1909 as one of four regional schools of agricultural instruction in the state.^[8] Glover was also a county judge, tax assessor, postmaster during World War I, and the first county agent in Sheridan.^[9][10]

David Delano Glover, Glover's younger brother who was born and attended school in Prattsville, Arkansas.^[11] He was an attorney in Malvern, Arkansas, and a U.S. representative from south Arkansas from 1929 to 1935. Like his brother, David D. Glover also served in the Arkansas House.^[2][12]

Baptist clergyman

The extended Glover family consisted of Presbyterians and Methodists; the Youngs were Baptist. Robert Glover was a steward in the Concord Methodist Church in Grant County; his wife, however, retained the Baptist affiliation. The couple lived first at Prattsville in Grant County. They taught their children the tenets of Scripture despite the divided denominational loyalties. Robert Glover was first called to the ministry as a teenager but rejected the calling of the Holy Spirit for some thirty years before he surrendered to preach in 1915, at the age of forty-eight. He preached in the Philadelphia Community until he was eighty-six, when he became disabled and died four years thereafter.^[13]

Conrad N. Glover (1895–1986), also a clergyman, described his father as "the best educated man that I knew in my youth. Not because he went to a lot of schools, but because he read almost everything that was printed.... He was a progressive man who believed in the institutions of government and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work." One day near the end of their father's life, Conrad Glover and two sisters were sitting by R. W. Glover's bedside. Near an open window some clouds were visible; the sun was setting, and the clouds exuded a purple hue. Conrad Glover said, "What a beautiful sunset." Glover replied, "Children, I know that my sun is soon to set." Conrad replied: "Dad, we know that, and we are glad you know it. How does it look to you beyond the sunset?" The reply is engraved on R. W. Glover's tombstone: "The way is clear, the gate is open, and I am ready to go."^[14]

Shortly before his death, Robert Glover told his son Conrad: "No man has ever lived who has had a more dutiful son than you have been to me.... You have done all for me that is possible for a boy to do for his dad...."^[9]

Robert Glover preached 41 years in the ranks of Missionary Baptists. Another son, Guy Glover, operated an automobile mechanic shop in Sheridan. Still another, Ralph B. Glover (1898–1970) preached for fifty-three years, first in the ABA from 1919 to 1932. He was the host pastor of the County Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas, in 1924, when the General Association closed and the ABA, the Missionary Baptist denomination, was launched. Thereafter from 1932 to 1958, Ralph Glover preached within the large Southern Baptist Convention. He returned to the much smaller ABA in 1958 for the last dozen years of his life.^[15]

Prior to 1924, R. W. Glover was once clerk of the General Association while son Ralph was the associational assistant clerk. R. W. Glover was also chairman of the Auditing Committee of the General Association, the predecessor of the ABA, and the moderator of both the Pine Bluff and Arkansas State associations. He also served on many committees, first of the General Association and then of the ABA. In 1917, he introduced the resolution naming the ABA Sunday school publications...."^[16]

The former ABA president A. T. Powers referred accordingly to R. W. Glover, the first person that Powers met when he came to Sheridan in 1921 to attend the former Missionary Baptist College there:^[17]"I looked upon him as one of the great men that I knew. He was somewhat an earthly father to me because he was the age of my father, of whom he reminded me. His counsel and advice [was like] what my father would give me, and I admired him. ..."^[18]

References