As the story was handed down to me: First aircraft to land in Madison County, AR, at the St. Paul Reunion (predecessor of the "Pioneer Day" gathering in St. Paul). The original photo is a badly deteriorated 2.5" x 3.5" B&W print; upper right inset is the hand-written inscription on the back of the print -- my maternal grandfather's pencil signature in grade school-boy cursive, and a later ink addition "St. Paul Reunion".

Leroy was born in 1905, and the original print shows wear and tear consistent with the print surviving time as part of a young boy's treasure collection.

I'm not an aviation expert of any sort, but am willing to hazard a guess that this is a Curtiss model JN-4 ("Jenny") bi-plane. Correction from more well-qualified folks would be welcome. The original photo is undated; after the end of WW-I, the JN-4 was popular with "barnstorming" pilots.

The "Jenny" was built primarily as a training aircraft for deployment during WW-I. Tons more information available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_JN-4

In the high-resolution scan, the tail number appears to be C245. If that's correct, some time after it's detour through St. Paul Arkansas, this machine later wound up in Canada and met the fate of many other training aircraft: http://flyingmachines.ru/Images7/Crowood/109-3.jpg

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture mentions several early aviation events in the NW Arkansas region during the 1910's, though not this particular appearance in SE Madison County. Article available here: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryid=4589

St. Paul ARMadison CountyArkansasSt. Paul ReunionCurtissJennyJN4Barnstormingaviation