This collection contains family papers for both the Maxfield, Allen Family of Batesville and the McKee family.

Theodore Allen, Elsie McKee’s father, was a well known pioneer of Batesville. He was born in Batesville on July 9, 1841. During the Civil War, he enlisted in Company E of the Second Arkansas Cavalry. After his father’s (Dr. John Farrell Allen’s) death, he took charge of the family dry goods store in Batesville. For many years, this store was the largest mercantile store in north central Arkansas. In 1871, Theodore Maxfield married Sarah Agnew Allen (Sallie). By 1905, Theodore Maxfield had abandoned his mercantile business, and in 1906 he organized the Theodore Maxfield Bank and Trust Company. After several mergers with regional banks, Theodore was president of one of the most reputable banking institutions in northeast Arkansas. In 1913, Theodore and two of his sons organized another dry goods store, this time the Theodore Maxfield Wholesale Dry Goods Company of Oklahoma City. The company was sold in 1919 following the death of one his sons.

George Taylor McKee, a pastor and missionary, was born December 12, 1887 in Hope (Hempstead County) Arkansas, the son of Charles McKee and Mary Anna Lydick, both of Kentucky. His wife, Elsie, also a missionary, was born on November 7, 1886, in Batesville Arkansas (Independence County), the daughter of Theodore Maxfield and Sarah Agnew Allen. The two were married in November of 1910. George McKee attended Arkansas College, graduating in 1907. He received a Bachelor of Divinity from Theological Seminary in 1910, and a Doctor of Divinity from Arkansas College in 1925. From 1911 until 1941, both he and Elsie served as Presbyterian Missionaries in the Belgian Congo. It was only due to the interruption of war and other outside factors that the couple returned permanently to America in 1941. After returning home, George McKee served pastorates in Lonoke, Morrilton, Batesville, Mount Home, and Newellton, Louisiana, before being honorably retired from the ministry in 1959.

Due to his long service in the Belgian Congo, he received the Belgian Award and Knight of Leopold II. Also, in 1973, George McKee was honored as Arkansas College’s Distinguished Alumnus. Elsie McKee died in Arkansas in 1970 at the age of 83. George McKee lived on for 10 years longer, mostly as a resident of Presbyterian Village in Little Rock, where he started a wheelchair church service. He died in 1980 at the age of 92.

He was survived by four children: Elizabeth (Gerding), Charles McKee, George McKee and Sarah (Burnside). All of the children spent some time of their childhood growing up in the Belgian Congo. Much of the correspondence found in the collection concerns the children’s time studying at a boarding school in the Congo. Son, Charles, like his father, became a minister and a missionary. There is correspondence regarding his ministry in the Belgian Congo, as well as the newly formed, Republic of the Congo. Just before her death in 2007, Sarah Burnside wrote and published a book entitled: Long Journey’s: An Arkansas Family in Africa, detailing her family’s missionary past.