Place:Peter Pender, Franklin, Arkansas, United States

The original post to this page said Peter Pender is uninhabited but my family and others from our "hometown" are living proof it has been and continues to be inhabited [it certainly is not large enough to be a town].

Peter Pender was at one point, as my great-grandmother put it, the place to be in southern Franklin county. Part of the oral history that I've always wanted to record is the name. "Peter" Pender was a French gentleman who read stories to the area children at the Peter Pender store. If memory serves me, this was in the '20s, happened every Wednesday and the correct spelling of his name was Pider Pender. It became habit to say, "we're going to see Pider Pender" but eventually evolved to simply saying "going to Peter Pender". The name stuck and it is still "Peter Pender" today. Sadly, the store was destroyed in the mid-eighties. I remember as a young girl joking that no one would now know when they were in Peter Pender without the store (it had long been a vacant building prior to the tornado). Fortunately, after I became an adult and had moved away, the area finally received 911 service and the dirt road leading to my parents home became Peter Pender Lane--ensuring Pider Pender's legacy lives on.