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I recently met an amazingly smart man. Arthur Milo Bohanan is a 79 year-old Sevier County native who went from a rural mountain farm boy to a nationally known criminalist and forensic researcher.

Former Hamblen County Sheriff Esco Jarnigan had worked with Arthur on cases and was eager to join Arthur and myself on our recent meeting with the humble and folksy man.

Arthur’s story is told in deep detail in his book, “Prints of a Man” and is a very valuable resource for those of the current era.

This story is a brief tale of Arthur’s early years where his family worked together to join neighbors to scratch out a living in a time without indoor toilets or electricity. Just this first part of his book is a valuable resource where some still living have experienced similar times.

Born April 2, 1944 at Boyd’s Creek, Arthur was the last of 12 children, some of whom would die early, of Rev. Russell Bohanan.

Rev. Russell had two earlier wives who had passed away, and would then marry Vetia Plemmons, who would bear him sons W.C. and Arthur.

Arthur’s lineages traces to the early settlement of Sevier County, with a line that branches off to Dolly Parton. Along with W.C., sisters Grace and Lela from the earlier marriage were still living at home. In a time when neighbors shared with other neighbors, Arthur’s mom couldn’t give enough milk for her new boy, so some neighbors sold a calf to bring the cow over to the Bohanans to supplement the baby’s feeding.

At first, pickings were lean for the Bohanan family, and without power or plumbing or much money, the family grew or killed virtually everything they ate. A typical day for the Bohanans and the local neighbors would begin before sun up and would last well after sundown on chores which would include feeding the animals, milking the cows, along with preparing, planting, tending and harvesting almost all the food the family would eat, while the tobacco patch would provide rare money to pay the store bill and provide shoes for the family. At the time, horse drawn wagons were as common in the area as were automobiles.

Fishing trips were as much for food as for recreation. One of Arnold’s early chores would be catching a young chicken that would be killed, cleaned and well enjoyed on a Sunday dinner. Many evening meals would sometimes be of mush – yellow cornmeal cooked in milk.

Arthur was six years old when in 1951 the family moved to Parrott’s Chapel in Jefferson County to be near other family. Their land would be poor and covered with cedar trees, while their un-insulated house would be heated by a pot-bellied stove. Newspaper would be pasted to the inside wall to stop outside breezes. Finding that two nearby wells had poor water, a new well 500 feet from the house brought good water. Woodland was cleared and crops of molasses cane, tobacco, corn and beans were planted and bee hives were established. During the fall, horses Kate or Pearl would be hitched to the cane mil to begin the molasses making process. What molasses wasn’t kept for home use was quickly sold.

November would be hog killing time with father Russell working with his brother Lee, who would typically work on Thanksgiving Day to prepare their hogs for later use by their families. In that time the men would worry that the weather was too cold to let the salt soak into the meat. The dead hog would be placed on a sled and covered with burlap bags where hot water was poured on the bags to loosen the hair that would be scraped off. The hog would then be hung up and cleaned out. The hams, shoulders and bacon were then be rubbed with salt and hung in the smokehouse. The remaining meat would be ground into seasoned sausage. The fat and skin would then be put in a kettles over open a fire to render into cracklings and lard. The cracklings would be eaten alone or cooked in with cornbread, while the lard was saved for cooking or for making soap. The tobacco process would take almost a year of often intensive labor from the planting of the seed to taking the tobacco leaves to market,

Without enough good land to grow wheat on, Mr. Bohanan would work a deal with some neighbors to use their land for a crop. It would be some easier if brother Lee was involved and would bring over his 8N Ford tractor, instead of having to use the team of horses. With the crop coming in, a neighbor would bring over his combine to cut the wheat with the shocks then put on a wagon to be carried to a stationary thrasher. The heavy bags of wheat would be taken to the mill, where it would be ground and held in an account to be picked up when needed in 25 pound cloth bags. The meal sacks would then be washed and made into clothing.

Mr. Russell was also a Baptist minister and would preach at many churches across the area. Sometimes the family would go along with him and other times Arthur would accompany his dad. After coming home from preaching at two churches, Arthur would learn to count when his dad would put his offerings on the bed. In the time when money was tight Arthur would count the coins with the collection from two churches often being $1.25 to $1.50. In that day revivals would be held during the day because a church might not have had electric lights, school would be let out for the students to attend. Young Arthur would get his first taste of Kool Aid and store bought cookies at a Bible School at Parrott’s Chapel United Methodist Church.

In the mid 1950s, Mr. Bohanan along with his two brothers would get jobs as seasonal workers at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that paid $1.10 an hour, which was good money for the time. Things would look up for the family afterwards. That same year, Arthur and W.C. would get pocket watches for Christmas, but Arthur would leave his in his overall pocket where it would be washed and ruined in his mother’s gasoline engine powered Maytag washing machine. Spring would often bring on a trip to Greenbriar to pick ramps, which were cooked in food or eaten raw. Arnold and his brother ate a big bunch of ramps before going to school and the smell was so strong that Arnold and W.C. would be seated far away fom the rest of the students.

At the age of 11 or 12, Arthur had saved enough money that he went to Sevierville with his dad to buy his first gun – a 16 gauge H & R that he’s kept in excellent shape. During the spring of Arnold’s 12th or 13th year, he would accept Jesus Christ at a service held by Rev. T. Lee Ownby, a friend of his father.

Arthur’s education would begin at the two-room Knight School that held grades one thru eight, with one teacher handling all the grades. He would later attend the Sims and Chestnut Hill schools. The Sims school had two outdoor toilets and water came from a hand pump that provided the students with drinking water. During recess and with no playground equipment, the children would play baseball on the backside of the school. At the time, many of the kids would drop out after about the 5th grade, with Maxine Manning being the first person Arthur knew to go onto college. At Chestnut Hill, Arthur would read and reread the book, “The FBI Story” by Don Whitehead, which would leave him with an interest in forensic science and would lead to a 60 year career in that field.

With the Sevier County high school being closer, Arthur was a junior when he saw a magazine ad for a home study course in finger printing which he took and completed in a short time. The highly recognized course would earn Arnold a certificate in latent fingerprints. After completing the course the Sevier County Sheriff Ray Nolan found that after using Arnold to get some fingerprints from a drive-in concession stand, began using him on other cases and would come by the high school to pick him up.. The only other Sevier County student to get that privilege would be Dolly Parton, who would leave school to film the Cas Walker Show. Dolly would return with her hair teased and wearing makeup, but would comb her hair and wash off her make-up to become one of the regular students.

Arnold would graduate from Sevier County High School in 1963 and be on his way to becoming one of the country’s most noted forensic scientists.