George E. Trower

George E. Trower (b. 1855 - ????) was a minister and state legislator in Arkansas.^[1]

In 1886 the Republican assembly nominated Trower, who was residing in Morrilton, Arkansas, as their candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives.^[2] Trower was the only black republican on the ticket and had little support from the white Republicans in the northern townships, however he won by a narrow margin of 21 votes.^[2]

He represented Conway County, Arkansas^[3] in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1887 as a Republican.^[1][4]

After winning the election the Democrats started harassing him and discovered that he had been performing marriages for over a year without the correct authority.^[2] Trowler immediately gained the proper certificate as a minister of the Gospel but the Democrats requested that the matter was referred to a grand jury.^[2]

After returning home from the legislature in April 1887, he was taken off a train at gunpoint by two Plumerville Democrats Benjamin White and Thomas Hervey^[5] and reported to have been assassinated.^[2][6] These reports turned out not to be true and he had moved to Independence County, Arkansas to pastor at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Batesville.^[1]

References

1. "African-American Legislators (Nineteenth Century)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
2. Barnes, Kenneth C. (1998). Who Killed John Clayton?: Political Violence and the Emergence of the New South, 1861-1893. Duke University Press. pp. 57–59, 202. ISBN 978-0-8223-2072-2.
3. Hempstead, Fay (1890). A Pictorial History of Arkansas: From Earliest Times to the Year 1890 ... Southern Historical Press. p. 1229. ISBN 978-0-89308-074-7.
4. "Arkansas List of Representatives". The Southern Standard. 18 September 1886. p. 4. Retrieved 2 May 2022. 
5. "Plumerville Conflict of 1886–1892". Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
6. Beary, Michael Jay (2001). Black Bishop: Edward T. Demby and the Struggle for Racial Equality in the Episcopal Church. University of Illinois Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-252-02618-8.