McCollum-Chidester House

Built in 1847, this antebellum home served as headquarters for both Confederate and Union forces during the Camden Expedition of 1864. It is now a Civil War museum.

The McCollum-Chidester House was built in 1847 by Peter McCollum, a North Carolinian merchant who purchased his building materials in New Orleans and had them shipped upriver to Camden by steamboat. It was the first planed lumber house in Ouachita County and possibly in all of southern Arkansas, boasting the first plastered walls, carpeting, and wallpaper in the region. McCollum brought Camden its first wallpaper in 1857 -- a dull grey pattern from New York -- and its first cast iron cooking stove that same year. The Arkansas Gazette would later note that "culture and hospitality were among Mr. McCollum's largest contributions to Camden's early days," and his home hosted prominent guests including General Albert Pike, judges, captains, and clergy. By 1860, Camden had grown into Arkansas's second-largest town.

In 1863, John T. Chidester purchased the property for ten thousand dollars in gold -- a shrewd transaction, as McCollum wisely refused payment in Confederate currency with the war raging. Chidester, born in New York in 1816, had begun his career with the Robertson Circus before driving stagecoaches from Washington, D.C. to Cincinnati. He eventually became a subcontractor for the John Butterfield Overland Mail Company, operating stagecoach routes across Arkansas carrying mail from Memphis to Fort Smith, with a daily run from Hot Springs to Little Rock. After buying the house, he remodeled it by adding two bedrooms and enlarging the dining room. Two of his sons would die fighting for the Confederacy near Camden.

The house's darkest chapter came during the Camden Expedition of 1864, part of the larger Red River Campaign. Confederate General Sterling Price first occupied the house as his headquarters. When Union General Frederick Steele's twelve thousand troops captured Camden on April 15, 1864, Steele commandeered the Chidester home, using the parlor and east bedroom as his headquarters for eleven days. During his occupation, two devastating engagements occurred. At the Battle of Poison Spring on April 18, Confederate forces under Generals John S. Marmaduke and Samuel B. Maxey attacked and captured a Union forage train of two hundred wagons escorted by 1,170 men, inflicting 301 Union casualties. African-American soldiers from the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment were massacred and mutilated during and after the battle -- an atrocity referred to as the worst massacre in Arkansas history. A week later at Marks' Mills on April 25, Confederate cavalry captured another Union wagon train, killing about one hundred and capturing nearly all the rest of roughly 1,300 Federal soldiers. These twin defeats forced Steele to abandon Camden and retreat to Little Rock.

During the Union occupation, Chidester was accused of spying for the Confederacy after allegedly confiscating Union mail from his stagecoach operations and turning it over to Confederate troops. Union soldiers searching for Chidester fired at random through an upstairs wall -- bullet holes that are still visible today -- while Chidester hid in a small closet nearby. He was forced to flee to Texas but later returned to resume his business operations. The Ouachita County Historical Society acquired the property from Chidester descendants in 1963, and the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. It now operates as a museum with original Chidester family furnishings.

The ghosts of the Camden Expedition have never entirely departed. Apparitions of both Confederate and Union officers have been seen in the parlor where General Steele commanded his disastrous campaign, the two spectral figures apparently unaware of each other as they go about their respective duties from different sides of the war. The sound of marching soldiers' footsteps echoes through the house, and a door that once served as the commanders' entrance opens on its own. The east bedroom -- where Steele slept while signing orders that sent men to die at Poison Spring -- has become the center of documented paranormal activity. A photograph taken in the 1980s, well before digital manipulation was possible, revealed the figure of a uniformed man reflected in the cathedral dresser mirror when no such person was present in the room. In November 2020, the investigative team Natural State Paranormal set up cameras and equipment in the east bedroom, placing Civil War swords from the museum's collection on the dresser. During three hours of recording, orbs and anomalies appeared in the room for approximately three minutes, with significant activity concentrated near the dresser. At the end of the investigation, a spirit was captured on an SLS camera at the foot of the bed, appearing to grip the bedpost. Multiple paranormal groups have investigated the house over the years, and all report that the spirits seem friendly, likely members of the Chidester family still attached to the home they occupied for a century. Danny Harrell, the museum's office manager and guide, leads tours Wednesday through Saturday from 9 AM to 4 PM through a house where the past lives alongside the present.