Dr. Spurlin Circle (Berryville, Arkansas)

Dr. Spurlin Circle is a street in Berryville, the seat of Carroll County in northwestern Arkansas. The city-run Berryville Community Center has the address 601 Dr. Spurlin Circle, Berryville, AR 72616.^[1][2] The center's website lists a pool, gym, fitness classes and youth sports programs.^[2]

Namesake

The street is named for a local "Dr. Spurlin." The city's published pages do not give his full name or say why he was honored.^[1][2] A 2015 downtown Berryville walking-tour script by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program mentions a Dr. Spurlin's dental office. Under the north side of the public square, it describes an 1894 double building now occupied by Scheel Law and Wilson's TV & Appliance. The east half was a bank from about 1909 until at least 1937 and later housed Ray Beck's insurance office, with Dr. Spurlin's dental office upstairs in the 1960s.^[3] The script does not give the dentist's full name.^[3] That points to a dentist, but no published source links that office to the street name.

Spurlin dentists in Berryville

Berryville had Spurlin dentists for most of the twentieth century. The Centennial History of Arkansas (1922) says Dr. R. P. Spurlin was born in Lyon County, Kentucky, on 13 February 1879. He graduated from the Kentucky School of Dentistry in Louisville in 1902, practised briefly in Paragould, and settled in Berryville in 1903. By 1922 he had an extensive practice there and had served on the town council.^[4] His father, Rev. John H. Spurlin, a Baptist minister, had moved to Berryville in 1902 and preached at its Baptist church.^[4] His grandfather was the Kentucky preacher James Utley Spurlin.^[4] Find a Grave records the elder dentist as Robert Parker Spurlin Sr. (1879–1948) and his father as Rev. John H. Spurlin (1850–1923), both buried in Berryville Memorial Cemetery.^[5][6]

His son, also a dentist, is recorded on Find a Grave as Dr. Robert Parker Spurlin (1914–1993), a veteran buried in the same cemetery with the inscription "D.D.S."^[7] A 1950 article on public-health dentistry in Arkansas says that on 25 March 1940 "Dr. R. P. Spurlin, Jr. of Berryville" was appointed director of the State Board of Health's new sub-division of dental hygiene. The director and his clinicians were called into military service in 1942. Spurlin rejoined the Board of Health staff after his demobilization in March 1946, then resigned to go into private practice.^[8] See Robert Parker Spurlin (Berryville dentist).

A December 1973 membership list in the Arkansas Dental Journal shows three dentists named Spurlin in Berryville: John Spurlin, Robert Spurlin, and Robert P. Spurlin Jr. Two of them practised at the same North Main Street office. This record comes from full-text search snippets only; the scanned issue is lending-restricted.^[9] Since the elder Dr. Spurlin died in 1948, the 1960s office in the walking-tour script would have belonged to one of these later Dr. Spurlins, but the script does not say which.^[3][5]

Spurlin Family Dentistry

A dental practice called Spurlin Family Dentistry operates on North Main Street in Berryville. Its Facebook business page describes it as a general dentist's office.^[10] Archived copies of its website from 2017 and 2019 describe it as the office of dentist Eldon Thompson Jr., not of a dentist named Spurlin.^[11][12] No published source connects the practice to the Dr. Spurlin for whom the street was named. See Spurlin dental practices.