Frederick Notrebe was a French veteran who had resided in Arkansas Post since 1810. Notrebe was a thriving trader, planter, and land speculator with connections to Little Rock and New Orleans. He was the man to see in Arkansas Post if you wanted to sell your hides and/or trade for supplies.
A few years later, Fredrick Notrebe was establishing King Cotton at Arkansas Post alongside the fur trade he had conducted since 1810. The Frenchman had advertised in the Arkansas Gazette as early as 1819 to purchase cotton. In 1835, Notrebe shipped a steamboat full of cotton out of Arkansas Post, bound for the New Orleans markets. Notrebe was not growing a steamboat full of cotton yearly but mainly bought most of it. Other Arkansawyers were thus producing it for the market too.[1] A few years later, Notrebe was campaigning to establish a bank at the Post. At his death, the Frenchman had amassed a considerable fortune in enslaved people, livestock, and land, starting with the fur trade and evolving into more significant ventures in cotton and land.[2]
[1] Arkansas Gazette, December 4, 1819, January 15, 1820; George W. Featherstonhaugh, Excursion through the slave states: from Washington on the Potomac to the frontier of Mexico (London: J. Murray, 1844), 234.
[2] Arkansas Gazette, December 4, 1819, January 15, 1820; Featherstonhaugh, Excursion through the slave states, 234; Arkansas State Gazette, July 24, 1839.
Arkansas Wildlife History 