Batavia, Arkansas was settled in 1881 by Roswell Emerson Underwood, who spent four years as a Genesee County, New York, surveyor for the Holland Land Company.

During its heyday, businesses included stores, hotels, a canning factory, a train depot, stockyards, mills, a corn gristmill, and a blacksmith shop.

While the community is bigger in terms of population and homes than it was as an incorporated town, the businesses are fewer.

Iowa native Frank Warning was another big fruit grower in Boone County.

Warning, along with his father, owned 240 acres of fine land located about a mile from Harrison, and that, too, became another fruit farm.